The concentration dependence of the statistical properties of light scattered by a monodisperse sphere suspension has been studied. Theoretical predictions for photon-counting distributions, obtained by supposing the scattered field is a superposition of coherent signal S and noise excitation N, agree well with the experimental results, thus providing an alternative method to obtain quantitative information on the influence of multiple scattering on measurements. Moreover, the autocorrelation function is deformed from an exponential law to a stretched-exponential law, as expected, and the experimental results show that the parameter ${\mathit{d}}_{\mathit{w}}$, quantifying the exponential stretching, and the ratio S/N exhibit a similar dependence on the level of multiple scattering.

• Received 5 November 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.49.3531