Elastic wave propagation in a highly scattering medium - A diffusion approach

The propagation of elastic waves in the moon, where the first seismograms were characterized by the presence of a long coda attributed to strongly scattered waves, is modeled with the aid of the time-dependent equation of radiative transfer. The average energy density as a function of time and space is described by the diffusion equation with linear dissipation on the assumption that all the energy present has been scattered many times and the time and distance scales of the problem are long compared to the scales of the scattering process. Ultrasonic experiments in the laboratory confirm the applicability of the formalism.