English

Diffusion of light in turbid media and Kubelka-Munk theory

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks 2023-03-09 v2 Optics

Abstract

We show that the Kubelka-Munk equations for the description of the intensity transfer of light in turbid media are equivalent to a one-dimensional diffusion equation, which is obtained by averaging the three-dimensional diffusion equation over the lateral directions. This enables us to identify uniquely the Kubelka-Munk parameters and derive expressions for diffuse reflection and transmission coefficients including the effect of internal reflections. Without internal reflections we recover the Kubelka-Munk formulas for these coefficients. We show that the Kubelka-Munk equations are the proper radiative-transfer equations for the one-dimensional diffusion problem and comment on previous attempts to derive the Kubelka-Munk equations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.04065,
  title  = {Diffusion of light in turbid media and Kubelka-Munk theory},
  author = {Walter Schirmacher and Giancarlo Ruocco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.04065},
  year   = {2023}
}