Conservation of energy in coherent backscattering of light

Abstract

Although conservation of energy is fundamental in physics, its principles seem to be violated in the field of wave propagation in turbid media by the energy enhancement of the coherent backscattering cone. In this letter we present experimental data which show that the energy enhancement of the cone is balanced by an energy cutback at all scattering angles. Moreover, we give a theoretical description which is in good agreement with these data. The additional terms needed to enforce energy conservation in this description result from an interference effect between incident and multiply scattered waves, which is reminiscent of the optical theorem in single scattering.