Venerdì 26 Giugno
Jacopo Bertolotti
Superdiffusion of light in Lévy glasses
ore 11:30
Lens Firenze

Abstract

Although the diffusive model is used (mostly for its simplicity) to describe a wide range of phenomena, it is becoming clear that many systems exhibit "anomalous" behavior. In particular superdiffusive phenomena (where the variance grows faster than linearly with time) are common in hydrology, economy and zoology. Since all of these are observational sciences (where we can analyze data but not perform controlled experiments), there is no possibility to directly check the theory with the experiment to verify (or falsify) the various models. To overcome this problem we propose the use of Lévy glasses: strongly inhomogeneous disordered optical systems where the incoherent propagation of light is superdiffusive and can be modeled with the use of Lévy walks. This kind of system pave the road to a systematic and controlled study of superdiffusion properties.