Work

Intensity of Waves Inside a Strongly Disordered Medium

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: Anderson localization does not lead to an exponential decay of intensity of an incident wave with the depth inside a strongly disordered three-dimensional medium. Instead, the average intensity is roughly constant in the first half of a disordered slab, sharply drops in a narrow region in the middle of the sample, and then remains low in the second half of the sample. A universal, scale-free spatial distribution of average intensity is found at mobility edges where the intensity exhibits strong sample-to-sample fluctuations. Our numerical simulations allow us to discriminate between two competing local diffusion theories of Anderson localization and to pinpoint a deficiency of the self-consistent theory.

Source: Physical Review Letters

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.123.233903

Authors: S. E. Skipetrov, I. M. Sokolov

Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire de Physique et Modélisation des Milieux Condensés, Université Grenoble Alpes, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University

Language: English

Topic: Random lasers and scattering media

Subfield: Acoustics and Ultrasonics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Russian Science Foundation

Award: G2946199398