Photon diffusion and invariant imbedding

This paper examines multiple scattering processes from the points of view o f the source function of radiative transfer and the emergence probability o f photon diffusion. It extends previous results to the case of layered slab s, i.e., inhomogeneous plane-pal-allel media, It derives equations for basi c functions of multiple scattering and photon diffusion and obtains relatio nships among them. The invariant imbedding method is used to physically and analytically derive initial-value problems for functions which also satisf y integral equations. The initial-value problems are useful for numerically solving direct problems, and for tackling inverse problems of remote sensi ng. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.