Abstract
The phenomenon of enhancement of backscatter from an inhomogeneous penetrable medium, i.e., the apparent increase up to a factor of 2 or so of the scattered electromagnetic flux when the scattering angle is changed from π − δθ to π (for fairly small δθ), is treated in a unified manner for large-scale refractive-index fluctuations and for particle scatterers. The analysis indicates that the particle effect is due to strong incoherent multiple scattering from particle to particle, whereas the random-continuum effect is due to a propagation coherence before and after a single large-angle scattering. A correlation between forward and backward modes in previously discussed two-flux theories is shown to fit in the framework of backscatter enhancement.
© 1991 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Ezekiel Bahar and Mary Ann Fitzwater
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 5(1) 89-98 (1988)
Leung Tsang and Akira Ishimaru
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 1(8) 836-839 (1984)
M. I. Mishchenko
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9(6) 978-982 (1992)