# Quantum Stochastic Absorption

## I Introduction

Wave propagation in an active random medium has attracted much attention during the past decade. Recently, many experiments have reported lasing action of light in optically active strongly scattering media. These systems exhibit interesting physical properties due to the combined effects of static disorder-induced multiple scattering and of coherent amplification/absorption. In the extensively studied case of an electron motion in a random medium it is well established that quantum interference effects arising from a serial disorder in one-dimensional systems lead to Anderson localization. An essential difference between electron and light propagation is the absence of conservation law for photons. Light can be absorbed or amplified retaining the phase coherence. In most of the theoretical studies amplification or absorption is modeled phenomenologically by introducing an imaginary potential (optical potential) in the Hamiltonian. In the case of light (electro-magnetic waves) this corresponds to a medium with a complex dielectric constant. Several interesting effects have been predicted which include statistics of super-reflection and transmission and the dual symmetry between absorption and amplification. Media thus modeled are referred to as coherently absorbing or amplifying.

In the case of electron transport, inelastic scattering (due to phonons) leads to loss of phase memory of the wave function. Thus the motion of electrons becomes phase incoherent and sample to sample fluctuations become self-averaging in the high temperature limit leading to a classical behavior. There has been much interest in the effect of inelastic scattering on the coherent tunneling through potential barriers. To allow for the possibility of inelastic decay on the otherwise coherent tunneling through potential barriers, several studies invoke absorption. To study the above phenomenon, one resorts to the optical potential models (coherent absorption models).

In the optical potential model the potential is made complex $`V(x)=V_r(x)iV_i`$. The Hamiltonian becomes non-Hermitian resulting in absorption or amplification of probability current depending on the sign of $`V_i`$. The presence of imaginary potential (absorption/amplification) leads to many counter-intuitive features. In the scattering case, in the vicinity of the absorber, the particle experiences a mismatch in the potential (being complex) and therefore it tries to avoid this region by enhanced back reflection. Imaginary potential plays a dual role of an absorber and a reflector. In other words, in such models absorption without reflection is not possible. Naively one expects the absorption to increase monotonically as a function of $`V_i`$. However, the observed behavior is non-monotonic. At first absorption increases and after exhibiting a maximum decreases to zero as $`V_i\mathrm{}`$. The absorber, in this limit acts as a perfect reflector. During each scattering event an electron picks up an additional scattering phase shift due to $`V_i`$ which along with multiple interference leads to additional coherence or resonances in the system. Thus, due to the presence of imaginary potentials, we have additional reflection and resonances in the system. In the presence of coherent absorption and quenched disorder, the stationary distribution for reflection coefficient has been calculated. This has been done within random phase approximation (RPA) using the invariant imbedding method. The stationary distribution is given by:

$`P_s(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{|D|exp(|D|)exp(\frac{|D|}{1r})}{(1r)^2}}\text{for}r1`$ (1)   
$`=`$ $`0\text{for}r>1.`$ (2)   
Here $`D`$ is proportional to $`V_i/W`$, $`W`$ being the strength of disorder. Notice that the distribution has a single peak which shifts towards $`r=0`$ with increasing absorption strength $`V_i`$. However, the exact distribution obtained numerically for strong disorder and strong absorption shows significant qualitative departure from this analytical distribution. For sufficiently strong absorption, the numerically obtained stationary distribution shows a double peak structure. In the limit $`V_i\mathrm{}`$ the distribution becomes a delta function at $`r=1`$. This corresponds to the limit where the absorber acts as a perfect reflector.

To this end we would like to develop a model where absorption does not lead to concomitant reflection and additional resonances as discussed above. Recently, such a stochastic absorption model was developed by Pradhan based on the work of Büttiker. In his treatment several absorptive side-channels are added to the purely elastic channels of interest. A particle that once enters the absorbing or the side-channel never returns back and is physically lost. He has obtained the Langevin equation for the reflection amplitude $`R(L)`$ for a random medium of length $`L`$ by enlarging the $`S`$-matrix to include side-channels. In continuum limit the equation for $`R(L)`$ is:

$$\frac{dR}{dL}=\alpha R(L)+2ikR(L)+ikV(L)[1+R(L)]^2,$$
(3)   
where $`\alpha `$ is the absorption parameter and $`V(L)`$ is the random potential representing the static disorder. Interestingly, within the random phase approximation (RPA), the stationary probability distribution for the reflection coefficient $`P_s(r)`$ ( for $`L\mathrm{}`$ ) is again given by Eq.1. In our present work we develop another simple model for absorption which can be readily used to study the case of amplifying medium as well. The medium comprises of random strength delta function scatterers at regular spatial intervals $`a`$. To model absorption (leaking out) of electrons, an attenuation constant per unit length $`\alpha `$ is introduced. Every time the electron traverses the free region between the delta scatterers, we insert a factor $`exp(\alpha a)`$ in the free propagator following Ref. . We find that this method of modeling absorption does not lead to additional reflection and resonances as in the case of optical potential models. We obtain the localization length and study the statistics of reflection and transmission coefficients. The stationary distribution of reflection coefficient agrees with Eq.1 in a larger parameter space. Following earlier method, the continuum limit of our model leads to the same Langevin equation (Eq. 3) for $`R(L)`$ where $`\alpha `$ is replaced by $`2\alpha `$. Naturally, agreement of our result with Eq.1 follows. In Sec.II we give the details of our model and the numerical procedure. The section after that is devoted to results and discussion.

## II The Model

We carry out calculations on the wave propagation in an absorbing medium characterized by an attenuation constant $`\alpha `$ and interspersed by a chain of uniformly spaced independent delta-function scatterers of random strengths. The $`i^{th}`$ delta-function scattering center is described by a transfer matrix

$$𝖬_𝗂=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1iq_i/2k& iq_i/2k\\ iq_i/2k& 1+iq_i/2k\end{array}\right)$$

where $`q_i`$ is the strength of the $`i^{th}`$ delta-function. The $`q_i`$’s are uniformly distributed over the range $`W/2q_iW/2`$, i.e., $`P(q_i)=1/W`$. Here $`W`$ is the disorder strength. We set units of $`\mathrm{}`$ and $`2m`$ to be unity. The energy of the incident wave is $`E=k^2`$. For further analysis, $`W`$ and $`\alpha `$ are scaled with respect to $`a`$ and are made dimensionless. Propagation of the wave in-between two consecutive delta-function scatterers separated by a unit spacing ($`a=1`$) can be described by the matrix

$$𝖷=\left(\begin{array}{cc}e^{ik\alpha }& 0\\ 0& e^{ik+\alpha }\end{array}\right).$$

The total transfer matrix for the $`L`$-site system is constructed by repeated application of $`𝖬_𝗂`$ and $`𝖷`$:

$$M=𝖬_𝖫𝖷\mathrm{}.\mathrm{𝖷𝖬}_\mathrm{𝟤}\mathrm{𝖷𝖬}_\mathrm{𝟣}.$$

From $`M`$ the reflection and transmission amplitudes are calculated using

$$R=\frac{M(2,1)}{M(2,2)}$$

and

$$T=\frac{\mathrm{𝖽𝖾𝗍}M}{M(2,2)}.$$

The reflection and transmission coefficients are $`r=|R|^2`$ and $`t=|T|^2`$ respectively and the absorption is given by $`\sigma =1rt`$. Thus, due to absorption the total flux is not conserved and we have $`r+t1`$.

## III Results and Discussion

In our studies we consider at least 10,000 realizations for calculating various distributions and averages. In the case of stationary distributions, the length of the samples considered were about 5 to 10 times the localization length. We also verified that the corresponding distributions or averages do not evolve any further with increasing sample length $`L`$. All results are shown for incident energy $`E=k^2=1.0`$ unless specified otherwise.

We first consider the behavior of $`lnt`$. The angular bracket denotes the ensemble average. In Fig.1 we plot $`lnt`$ as a function of length $`L`$ for ordered absorptive medium ( $`W=0.0`$, $`\alpha =0.05`$ ), ensemble averaged disordered non-absorptive medium ( $`W=1.0`$, $`\alpha =0.0`$ ) and disordered absorptive medium ( $`W=1.0`$, $`\alpha =0.05,0.1,0.15`$ ). In all the cases transmission decays exponentially with the length. The absorption-induced length scale $`\xi `$ in random medium associated with the decay of transmission coefficient is always less than both $`\xi _a`$ and $`\xi _w`$. The localization length for disordered nonabsorptive medium scales as $`\xi _w=96k^2/W^2`$ and for ordered absorptive medium, as $`\xi _a=1/\alpha `$. In Fig.2 we show the plot of $`1/\xi `$ versus $`1/\xi _w+1/\xi _a`$ obtained by changing $`\alpha `$ for various values of disorder strength $`W`$. We have numerically calculated $`1/\xi `$ for the different cases. All the points fall on a straight line with unit slope indicating the relation $`1/\xi =1/\xi _w+1/\xi _a`$. Such a relation exists for the case of coherently absorbing and amplifying media.

To study the nature of fluctuations in the transmission coefficient, in Fig.3 we plot, on log-scale, average $`t`$ ($`t`$), root-mean-squared variance $`t_v=\sqrt{t^2t^2}`$ and root-mean-squared relative variance $`t_{rv}=t_v/t`$ as a function of length $`L`$ for $`W=1.0`$ and $`\alpha =0.01`$. We see from the figure that $`t_v`$ is less than $`t`$ and $`t_{rv}`$ is less than unity upto $`L/\xi 3`$. But, beyond that $`t_v`$ becomes greater than $`t`$ and $`t_{rv}`$ crosses unity making the transmission coefficient a non-self-averaging quantity. This implies that the fluctuations in $`t`$ over the ensemble of macroscopically identical samples dominates the ensemble average. The transmission coefficient becomes very sensitive to spatial realizations of the impurity configurations.

In Fig.4 we show the distribution $`P(t)`$ at different sample lengths for $`\alpha =0.01`$ and $`W=1.0`$. For small lengths $`L`$, resonant transmission dominates and $`P(t)`$ peaks at a large value of $`t`$. In fact for $`L0`$, $`P(t)\delta (t1)`$. As the length becomes comparable to the localization length $`L\xi `$, multiple reflections start dominating. Consequently, the time spent inside the medium increases leading to more absorption. Thus, the peak of the distribution shifts to smaller values of $`t`$ and the distribution broadens due to randomization by disorder. In the long length limit $`L>>\xi `$, the distribution develops long tails and its peak shifts towards $`t=0`$. The transmittance shows large sample-to-sample fluctuations and becomes a non-self-averaging quantity. It is the tail of the distribution that determines the behavior of fluctuations. Finally, as expected, for $`L\mathrm{}`$ , $`P(t)\delta (t)`$.

From the previous discussion it is clear that the transmittance becomes non-self-averaging due to the appearance of tails in the $`t`$-distribution. These tails owe their existence to the presence of resonant realizations in the ensemble. Hence, it is worthwhile to investigate the nature of resonances and the effect of absorption on them. Specifically, we would like to understand if the presence of absorption would give rise to any new resonances. It is well known from the studies in passive disordered media that the ensemble fluctuation and the fluctuations for a given sample as a function of chemical potential or energy are expected to be related by some sort of ergodicity, i.e., the measured fluctuations as a function of the control parameter are identical to the fluctuations observable by changing the impurity configurations. In Fig.5(a) we show the plot of $`t`$ versus $`k`$ for $`W=1.0`$ and $`\alpha =0`$ at $`L=100`$ for a given realization of the random potential. Figure 5(b) shows a plot of $`t`$ versus $`k`$ for the same realization but with $`\alpha =0.01`$. By mere visual inspection one can see that the only effect of absorption, apart from reducing the value of transmission, is to increase the width of resonance peaks for the passive case. Thus the presence of absorption does not introduce any new resonances. This can be seen from Fig.5(c) and (d) which emphasize Fig.5(a) and (b) respectively by enlarging a narrow region between $`k=1.5`$ to $`k=2.0`$. We do not see any new peaks in the transmission spectrum for absorptive case. Similar effect is observed in case of reflection also.

We now turn our attention to the statistics of reflection coefficient. In Fig.6 we plot $`lnr`$ as a function of length $`L`$ for a fixed value of disorder strength $`W=1.0`$ and different values of absorption strength $`\alpha `$ as indicated in the figure. It increases with $`L`$ initially and for $`L\xi `$, it saturates. At any $`L`$, $`lnr|_{W,\alpha }<lnr|_{W,0}`$. This is in contrast to the behavior observed for the case of coherent absorption. As we know, in the case of coherent absorption, the reflection coefficient tends to unity for absorption strength becoming very large. In this regime, the predominantly reflecting nature of optical potential makes reflection larger than that in the corresponding passive case.

In Fig.7 we have shown $`P_s(r)`$ for various values of $`\alpha `$. In the small $`\alpha `$ range, i.e., for $`\alpha =0.001`$, the distribution has a peak at large $`r`$. As we increase $`\alpha `$ the peak shifts to smaller values of $`r`$. The thick line shows the fit obtained using the analytical expression given in Eq.1. In the limit of large $`\alpha `$, the distribution tends to become a delta function at $`r=0`$. This is in sharp contrast to the behavior observed for coherent absorption. The distribution is always single peaked. For all non-zero values of $`\alpha `$ the medium acts as an absorber only and there is no additional reflection due to absorption. Figure 8 shows a monotonic decrease of saturated value of average reflection coefficient $`r_s`$ as a function of $`\alpha `$. The average absorption, defined as $`\sigma =1rt`$, increases monotonically with increasing $`\alpha `$ and in the limit of $`\alpha \mathrm{}`$ saturates to unity in contrast to the optical model wherein it tends to zero. In the case of the optical model, the absorption coefficient is a non-monotonic function of absorption strength $`V_i`$ and for values of $`V_i`$ near the peak the stationary distribution of reflection coefficient displays a double peak. In fact our model exhibits the properties in agreement with physical expectations of an absorbing medium, i.e., stronger the absorption lesser are the reflection and transmission across the medium.

Finally, we discuss the phase distribution. Figure 9 shows the stationary distribution of phase of the reflected wave for a fixed disorder strength $`W=1.0`$ and various for values of $`\alpha `$. For small values of disorder one generally expects the phase distribution to be uniform if the system size is around the localization length. This is seen in Fig.9(a) for the case of weak absorption. As we increase $`\alpha `$ the phase distribution develops two distinct peaks – a feature observed for coherent absorption also. This is related to the fact that the localization length decreases with $`\alpha `$. We would like to point out that the stationary distribution $`P_s(r)`$ is same within the RPA for the case of coherently as well as stochastically absorbing media. Unlike in the case of coherently absorbing medium, Eq.1 seems to be valid in a larger parameter space for the stochastic absorbing medium where the RPA may not be valid. The parameters for validity of the RPA are determined by the observation of uniform phase distribution. However, beyond the RPA, $`P_s(r)`$ for the case of stochastic and coherent absorbing media are qualitatively distinct from each other.

In conclusion, we have studied a new model of quantum stochastic absorption. The behavior observed for transmission and reflection coefficients is in accordance with physical expectations of an absorbing medium. This model can be extended to the case of stochastically amplifying medium. It exhibits duality between absorption and amplification which has received much attention recently. Results for this will be reported elsewhere.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One of us (DS) would like to thank Prof. S. N. Behera for extending hospitality at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar.