Observation of Resonant Diffusive Radiation in Random Multilayered Systems

A brief ideological and historical review of problems of high energy diffractive scattering is given.

It was predicted long ago that ultra-thin metallic films must exhibit unusual optical properties for radiation frequencies from rf to infrared domain. A film would remain highly reflective even when it is orders of magnitude thinner than a skin depth at any frequency. Only when it is a few nanometers thick (depending on material but not on the frequency), its reflectivity and transmittivity get equal, while its absorption peaks at 50%. It has been confirmed experimentally and...

Propagation of light in a highly scattering medium is among the most fascinating optical effect that everyone experiences on an everyday basis and possesses a number of fundamental problems which have yet to be solved. Conventional wisdom suggests that non-linear effects do not play a significant role because the diffusive nature of scattering acts to spread the intensity, dramatically weakening these effects. We demonstrate the first experimental evidence of lasing on a Rama...

Areal density of disorder-induced resonators with a high quality factor, $Q\gg 1$, in a film with fluctuating refraction index is calculated theoretically. We demonstrate that for a given $kl>1$, where $k$ is the light wave vector, and $l$ is the transport mean free path, when {\em on average} the light propagation is diffusive, the likelihood for finding a random resonator increases dramatically with increasing the correlation radius of the disorder. Parameters of {\em most ...

The well-known diffusion theory describes propagation of light and electromagnetic waves in complex media. While diffusion theory is known to fail both for predominant forward scattering or strong absorption, its precise range of validity has never been established. Therefore we present precise, universal limits on the scattering properties, beyond which diffusion theory yields unphysical negative energy density and negative incident flux. When applying diffusion theory to sa...

A tutorial discussion of the propagation of waves in random media is presented. In first approximation the transport of the multiple scattered waves is given by diffusion theory, but important corrections are present. These corrections are calculated with the radiative transfer or Schwarzschild-Milne equation, which describes intensity transport at the ``mesoscopic'' level and is derived from the ``microscopic'' wave equation. A precise treatment of the diffuse intensity is d...

Scattering poses a significant challenge in optical imaging. In microscopy, it leads to progressive degradation of image quality preventing sample examination at increasing depths. As the thickness of the sample increases, the number of photons that can successfully pass through it decreases, leading to a reduced signal and preventing us from obtaining clear images. Imaging becomes even more difficult with dynamic scatterers like biological tissues that change over time. We d...

The review presents basic elements of the theory of electromagnetic emission by nonthermal particles propagating in stochastic media. In particular, general theory and a few special regimes of Diffusive Synchrotron Radiation (DSR)arising in the presence of random magnetic/electric fields are analyzed in detail. Possible applications of the DSR theory to astrophysical sources as well as other emission processes typical for the random media are discussed briefly.

This article is devoted to the results of an experimental test of the theoretical assumption that the basic axiomatic postulate of statistical physics according to which it is equally probable for a closed system to reside in any of the microstates accessible to it may be invalid for nonergodic cases. In the course of photometric experiments for the purpose of recording the predicted loss of isotropy by a diffuse light field when it came into contact with a two-dimensional ph...

The presence of resonances modifies the passage of light or of electrons through a disordered medium. We generalize random matrix theory to account for this effect. Using supersymmetry, we calculate analytically the mean density of states, and the effective Lagrangean of the generating functional for the two-point function. We show that the diffusion constant scales with the effective mean level spacing. The latter exhibits a resonance dip. These facts allow us to interpret e...