Measurements of extreme first passage times in photon transport

Abstract

Photon transport through turbid media has typically been modeled through diffusion or telegraph equations. These models describe behavior of the average, or typical, photon with remarkable accuracy, however, we show here that they fail to capture the Extreme First Passage Times (EFPTs) of photon transport. By sending ultra-fast bursts of photons through a scattering medium and timing the arrival of the first passage photon, we measure the distribution of these EFPTs of photons in a random environment. Our measured EFPTs differ from those predicted by both the diffusion approximation and telegraph equation. Instead, we observe the EFPT as the time expected for light to travel through an index-averaged medium. These results reveal flaws in both models and invite a re-examining of their underlying assumptions.