The purpose of the work is a study of diffusion of light in those media in which it is impossible to disregard multiple light scattering. The solution of this problem is of interest to scientists and also in the practice of diverse fields of knowledge: atmospheric optics and optics of the sea, astrophysics, lighting engineering, densitometry, hydrobiology, and others. (Author).
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Recent advances in wave propagation in random media are certainly consequences of new approaches to fundamental issues, as well as of a strong interest in potential applications. A collective effort has been made to present in this book the state of the art in fundamental concepts, as well as in biomedical imaging techniques. As an example, the recent introduction of wave chaos, and more specifically random matrix theory - an old tool from nuclear physics - to the study of multiple scattering, has pointed the way to a deeper understanding of wave coherence in complex media. At the same time, efficient new approaches for retrieving information from random media promise to allow wave imaging of small tumors in opaque tissues. Review chapters are written by experts in the field, with the aim of making the book accessible to the widest possible scientific audience: graduate students and research scientists in theoretical and applied physics, optics, acoustics, and biomedical physics.
Light scattering by densely packed inhomogeneous media is a particularly ch- lenging optics problem. In most cases, only approximate methods are used for the calculations. However, in the case where only a small number of macroscopic sc- tering particles are in contact (clusters or aggregates) it is possible to obtain exact results solving Maxwell’s equations. Simulations are possible, however, only for a relativelysmallnumberofparticles,especiallyiftheirsizesarelargerthanthewa- length of incident light. The ?rst review chapter in PartI of this volume, prepared by Yasuhiko Okada, presents modern numerical techniques used for the simulation of optical characteristics of densely packed groups of spherical particles. In this case, Mie theory cannot provide accurate results because particles are located in the near ?eld of each other and strongly interact. As a matter of fact, Maxwell’s equations must be solved not for each particle separately but for the ensemble as a whole in this case. The author describes techniques for the generation of shapes of aggregates. The orientation averaging is performed by a numerical integration with respect to Euler angles. The numerical aspects of various techniques such as the T-matrix method, discrete dipole approximation, the ?nite di?erence time domain method, e?ective medium theory, and generalized multi-particle Mie so- tion are presented. Recent advances in numerical techniques such as the grouping and adding method and also numerical orientation averaging using a Monte Carlo method are discussed in great depth.
