Angular power spectrum of scattered electromagnetic waves in randomly inhomogeneous plasma with electron density fluctuations

Peculiarities of the electromagnetic waves propagation in randomly inhomogeneous media have been intensively studied [1,2]. Anisotropic irregularities characterize: lyotropic liquid crystals having hexagonal structure [3], the Earth´s ionospheric plasma with filed-aligned irregularities [4]. Angular power spectrum (APS) of ray intensity at light propagation in random medium with prolate irregularities has been investigated in [5-9]. Peculiarities of the evolution of the APS of multiple scattered radiation in the ionospheric plasma taking into account diffraction effects caused by electron density fluctuations are investigated in this paper. It has been shown that the APS has a double-peaked shape at oblique illumination of medium by mono-directed incident radiation using the smooth perturbation method. Correlation functions of the phase fluctuations are calculated for arbitrary correlation functions of electron density fluctuations. Analytical and numerical calculations are carried out for anisotropic Gaussian correlation function.