LIGHT SCATTERING AND REFLECTIVITY OF LIQUID INTERFACES

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Abstract
Because of thermal motion, a liquid surface is never perfectly flat. This modifies the relectivity properties of the surface and gives rise to scattering of light. The frequency dependence of the light scattered by the surface corrugations contains interesting informations about capillary waves propagation. Several surface properties can be thus measured : surface tension, surface elasticity and viscosity. The surface reflectivity differs from the Fresnel reflectivity not only because of the "intrinsic" density profile across the interface, but also because the surface corrugations are present. The differences are usually only important around the Brewster incidence. But when the surface tension is small they can be easily observed around the normal incidence. A brief summary of these differents aspects of the thermal motion on liquid surfaces will be presented

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