Correlation between intensity fluctuations induced by scattering of a partially coherent, electromagnetic wave from a quasi-homogeneous medium

•Correlation between intensity fluctuations is derived for the light scattered from a QH medium.•Effects of the medium's correlation length and polarization of the incident wave on the CIF are revealed.•The obtained results are important for studying the scattered intensity fluctuations of non-Gaussian correlated random beams.

Based on the first-order Born approximation, the correlation between intensity fluctuations is derived for a partially coherent, electromagnetic plane wave scattering from a spatially quasi-homogeneous medium. Young׳s pinholes are utilized to control the degree of coherence of the incident field. For the electromagnetic scattering case, it is shown that the CIF of the scattered field strongly depends on the degree of polarization of the incident wave, Young׳s pinhole parameter, effective radius and correlation length of the medium. The influences of these parameters on the CIF distributions are revealed by numerical calculations.