Recurrent scattering and memory effect at the Anderson localization transition

Alexandre Aubry, Laura A. Cobus, Sergey E. Skipetrov, Bart A. van Tiggelen, Arnaud Derode, John H. Page

Published 2013-06-12, updated 2014-01-29Version 2

We report on ultrasonic measurements of the propagation operator in a strongly scattering mesoglass. The backscattered field is shown to display a deterministic spatial coherence due to a remarkably large memory effect induced by long recurrent trajectories. Investigation of the recurrent scattering contribution directly yields the probability for a wave to come back close to its starting spot. The decay of this quantity with time is shown to change dramatically near the Anderson localization transition. The singular value decomposition of the propagation operator reveals the dominance of very intense recurrent scattering paths near the mobility edge.