Coupled paraxial wave equations in random media in the white-noise regime (Q1009489)

The authors study transmission and reflection of acoustic waves in a slab random medium consisting of 3-dimensional random fluctuations and whose end can be either transparent or a strong interface. Indeed, the authors motivate the use of rapid fluctuations and they prove that the paraxial and white-noise approximations are valid; the convergence to the white-noise paraxial wave equation in the case of a stratified media with weak fluctuations has been studied by \textit{F. Bailly, J. F. Clouet} and \textit{J. P. Fouque} [SIAM J. Appl. Math. 56, 1445--1470 (1996; Zbl 0859.60061)]. The limit random model that has been obtained corresponds to a system of coupled Schrödinger equations driven by a Brownian field. Then, owing to this model, the two-point statistics of the transmitted and reflected waves can be computed and the enhanced backscattering phenomenon can be studied. More precisely, as described in Section 2 of the paper, the linear acoustic waves propagate according to the following governing equations: \[ \rho(z,x)\frac{\partial u}{\partial t} +\nabla p=F, \quad \frac{1}{K(z,x)}\frac{\partial p}{\partial t} + \nabla u=0, \] where \(p\) is the pressure field, \(u\) the velocity field, \(\rho\) is the density of the medium, \(K\) is the bulk modulus of the medium, which models the medium fluctuations, and \((z,x)\in \mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}^d\) are the space coordinates. \(F\) corresponds to the forcing term. The random slab under consideration is determined by \(z\in (0,L)\), where \(L\) is the propagation distance, and it is assumed to lie in-between two homogeneous half-spaces. The main features of the random media are described (in terms of \(K\) and \(\rho\)) according to the assumption that the medium fluctuations vary rapidly in the random slab \((0,L)\). Then, the scaling regime considered in the paper is described in detail so that the transmitted and reflected wave fields are obtained. Section 3 is devoted to prove that the above mentioned transmitted and reflected wave fields in the scaling regime converges in law, in some space of functions, to a limit which is described by a random Schrödinger model. The main points in the proof are the following: tightness and a priori estimates for the sequence, convergence of the finite-dimensional distributions and use of Itô's formula for Hilbert-space-valued processes. Eventually, the two-point statistics of the transmitted and reflected wave fields are computed and the enhanced backscattering property is established. This has been done thanks to a detailed description of the Wigner distributions associated to the transmitted and reflected waves and its corresponding integral representations (Sections 4 and 5).