Similarity effects in multiple scattering of coherent radiation: Phenomenology and experiments

Based on phenomenological concepts of statistics of effective optical paths for multiple scattering of coherent radiation, an analysis is carried out of similarity effects observed for the dependences of statistical moments of the scattered field on the relaxation parameters with a dimension of reciprocal length. Within the framework of the diffusion approximation, expressions are obtained that describe the autocorrelation function of fluctuations of the scattered-field amplitude, the degree of polarization, and the normalized intensity of scattered light for media with a finite absorption length in the case of forward scattering of coherent radiation in a plane layer of an isotropic scattering medium. The results of the analysis show the similarity of the dependences of these quantities on the corresponding spatial scales. Experiments with model scattering media (aqueous suspensions of polystyrene spherical particles) supported the existence of similarity effects in multiple scattering. An experimental study was made of the relation between the characteristic depolarization length and the transport length for multiple scattering of coherent radiation in a plane layer. The effective value of the radiation diffusion coefficient providing the best agreement between the experimental and the calculated values of parameters of the scattered field is shown to be independent of the absorption coefficient of a medium.