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

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