Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 11, 2026

Scattering And Absorption of Light in Planetary Regoliths
Published on: July 1, 2019
Exact description of photon migration in anisotropically scattering media
1Department of Mathematics, University for Railway Communications, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Abstract:
The aim of the present paper is to deliver a method for exact calculation of the probability of photon migration in an infinite and homogeneous medium scattering photons anisotropically. The phase function is represented as an expansion over spherical harmonics. The probability of photon migration is obtained as an expansion with respect to the number of scatterings with the coefficients depending on the distance-to-time ratio and can be easily calculated from recurrence relations. Up to 30 scatterings are taken into account when computing the migration probabilities, the number of effectively contributing scatterings being strongly dependent on the distance-to-time ratio decreasing when one approaches the propagation front. The important property of the method is its capability to describe exactly migration from the early arriving photons up to the scattering ones. The limits of the approximate description of anisotropic scattering as isotropic with an effective value of the scattering coefficient is analyzed by calculating the best-fit value of the scattering coefficient.
Related Concept Videos
Propagation of Waves
Consider a scenario where a wave propagates from a string of low linear mass density to a string of high linear mass density. In such a case, the reflected wave is out of phase with respect to the incident wave, however the...
Dual Nature of Electromagnetic (EM) Radiation
Wavelength is the distance between two consecutive peaks (the highest point) or troughs (the lowest point) in the wave. Frequency is the number of...
Propagation Speed of Electromagnetic Waves
Plane Electromagnetic Waves I
The EM field is assumed to be a...
Electromagnetic Waves in Matter
Consider the electromagnetic wave passing through a dielectric medium. In such a case, Maxwell's equations get modified. In Ampere's law, ε0 , the dielectric permittivity of free space is replaced with ε, the permittivity of dielectric. Also, the vacuum permeability μ0 is replaced by the permeability of the medium, μ.
Furthermore, the...
Energy Carried By Electromagnetic Waves

