Multiple scattering in the spirit of Leslie Foldy #

Paul Martin

10:30 Tuesday in 4Q05.

Part of the Multiple wave scattering session.

Abstract #

Foldy’s name is best known to wave theorists because of his 1945 paper on multiple scattering. This came out of wartime work on sound propagation through bubbly liquids. The paper itself contains a deterministic theory for scattering by a finite number of small objects, and a probabilistic theory for wave propagation through random arrangements of many small scatterers in which a certain closure assumption is invoked. Assumptions of this kind can be said to be unreasonably effective. We describe some of this early work and then review more recent work on a variety of multiple scattering problems.