Concentration-of-Measure Theory for Structures and Fluctuations of Waves

The emergence of nonequilibrium phenomena in individual complex wave systems has long been of fundamental interest. Its analytic studies remain notoriously difficult. Using the mathematical tool of the concentration of measure, we develop a theory for structures and fluctuations of waves in individual disordered media. We find that, for both diffusive and localized waves, fluctuations associated with the change in incoming waves ("wave-to-wave" fluctuations) exhibit a new kind of universality, which does not exist in conventional mesoscopic fluctuations associated with the change in disorder realizations ("sample-to-sample" fluctuations), and originates from the coherence between the natural channels of waves-the transmission eigenchannels. Using the results obtained for wave-to-wave fluctuations, we find the criterion for almost all stationary scattering states to exhibit the same spatial structure such as the diffusive steady state. We further show that the expectations of observables at stationary scattering states are independent of incoming waves and are given by their averages with respect to eigenchannels. This suggests the possibility of extending the studies of thermalization of closed systems to open systems, which provides new perspectives for the emergence of nonequilibrium statistical phenomena.