Wave Propagation in a Randomly Inhomogeneous Medium. I

Abstract

The propagation of sound pulses from a point source in a medium where the index of refraction varies randomly is studied by means of the Born approximation to the wave equation. The coefficient of variation (standard deviation of the amplitude of a series of pulses, expressed as a percentage of the mean amplitude of the series) is evaluated for pulse lengths short compared with the time in which the refractive index varies significantly, and for ranges large compared with the wavelength of the sound. The results are in agreement with the experiments of Sheehy.