Phase covariance in the first Rytov approximation ($\mathrm{Cov}({\phi }_1,{\phi }_2)=\iint b_1{b}_2{C}_W$)

For a centered real scattering potential fluctuation $W$ and the imaginary part $b$ of the incident-field-weighted Green function, $\phi (\mathbf{r})=-\int b(\mathbf{r},{\mathbf{r}}^{\prime })W({\mathbf{r}}^{\prime })d{\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }$. Its mean vanishes, and its covariance function is the double integral of the two deterministic kernels against the covariance function of $W$. The correlation of the refractive index itself is insufficient when the scattering potential depends quadratically on that index.