Gardashov R. H., Mammedov R. M., Osadchy V. Yu.
The relationship between the characteristics (sizes and numbers) of the Sun glints (or other light source of small angular size) on the rough sea surface and a wave spectrum is investigated. It is assumed that for each individual glint, formed on a real wave there is the «effective wave», which is the sum of two harmonic waves propagating in different directions and forming the glint with the same size. Based on this assumption and using the density distribution of the size of the glints, the expression for the wave spectrum, which agrees well with the known spectra, is derived. On the basis of theoretical calculations and numerical experiments the dependences of the characteristics of Sun glints on the wind speed, the width of the angular distribution of the energy of harmonics, as well as different parts of the wave spectrum are studied. Thus, a new method for determining the wave spectrum on the distribution of the Sun glints sizes is proposed.
