Coherent backscattering of singular beams

The phenomenon of coherent backscattering depends on both the statistical characteristics of a random scattering medium and the correlation features of the incident field. Imposing a wavefront singularity on the incident field offers a unique and very attractive way to modify the field correlations in a deterministic manner. The field correlations are found to act as a path-length filter which modifies the distribution of different contributions to the enhancement cone. This effect is thoroughly discussed and demonstrated experimentally for the case of single scale scattering systems.