Waves in Complex Media

Book excerpt: "Why should we learn about the behavior of waves in optical media with irregular, non-periodic, and even disordered structures? First of all, because they can be found everywhere around us, from complex functional materials to the arrangement of leaves on plant stems and even at the inner core of number theory! Second, because the scattering behavior of waves in complex media surprises us with emergent phenomena driven by interference effects. Third, because waves in complex media unveil profound analogies between the classical and quantum transport regimes beyond standard diffusion theory such as, for example, Anderson light localization. However, while waves in periodic structures have been deeply investigated for more than a century and are discussed by the majority of graduate-level textbooks in optics and photonics, the behavior of waves in more general aperiodic environments is almost exclusively addressed in the specialized literature and consequently has limited impact on graduate curricula. It is my goal to bridge this gap by offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary textbook that systematically addresses both the conceptual foundation and the scattering properties of optical waves in complex media"--