Statistical dependence of phase-quadrature fields in an enclosure

The phase quadrature components of the electromagnetic field inside an overmoded enclosure are uncorrelated, but usually not statistically independent. The statistics of these components are far more manageable, however if we make the approximation that statistical independence does exist. In this paper, we examine the error caused by this approximation for three commonly occurring distributions (normal, log normal, and leaky enclosure). Results for these three cases respectively bound the attendant error of 0%, 20%, and 6%.