Intensity of waves inside a strongly disordered medium

S. E. Skipetrov; I. M. Sokolov

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.123.233903

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arXiv · 1907.05299

Intensity of waves inside a strongly disordered medium

S. E. Skipetrov·I. M. Sokolov

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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.

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S. E. Skipetrov, I. M. Sokolov. 2019-11-13. Intensity of waves inside a strongly disordered medium. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.123.233903

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