Unification of radar phenomena as spacetime curvature: prediction and observation of an affine-phase effect.

The many properties of radar echoes and other radiative systems were recently described by Gabriel [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 19, 946 (2002)] as lower-dimensional projections of simple forms in special relativity. A broader treatment including coherent phenomena is summarized, in which the phase properties of radar images and interferograms are also shown to have a simple unified structure. Their apparent complexity is a result of projection onto the lower dimension(s) of the observation. A predicted new property, locally scalable (affine) phase, is observed in a radar interferogram.