Disorder Fingerprint: Intensity Distributions In The Near Field Of Random Media

The structural morphology of complex dielectric media determines their functionalities by driving the statistical properties of the electromagnetic fields. Our controlled experiments and full electromagnetic calculations that go beyond common dipolar approximations demonstrate that the specific characteristics of disorder lead to non-Rayleigh statistics of detected intensity, which can be directly accessed in the near field of random media and can be unambiguously related to the short-range correlations of disorder