Abstract:
    I will discuss the challenges in measuring the statistics of steady state and pulsed microwave and optical propagation in random media as well as the surprising confluence of factors that make it possible to make detailed and accurate measurements. These measurements give the statistics over a random ensemble of statistically equivalent samples as well as the statistics within a single sample. Statistics in single samples are crucial for imaging, focusing and enhanced transmission in random media with potential applications in biomedical imaging and telecommunications. The essence of our findings is captured in a string of relationships between localization parameters that encapsulate diverse aspects of wave propagation. These include the average value, fluctuations and correlation of intensity, total transmission and conductance, the participation number of transmission eigenvalues and the ratio of the width and spacing of modes of the random medium. Finally I will discuss efforts to find the energy distribution within random samples and to relate this to characteristics of transmitted radiation.
    This work was performed with Jing Wang, Zhou Shi, Jongchul Park, Xiaojun Cheng and Matthieu Davy and was supported by the National Science Foundation.