Observation of Anomalous Transport of Strongly Multiple Scattered Light in Thin Disordered Slabs

We present results of experiments on the transport of light through thin random media. Total transmission and time-resolved propagation measurements were performed using strongly scattering samples of varying thickness L. For L/ℓ<8, where ℓ is the transport mean free path, the observed decay times from the long-time exponential behavior exhibit strong deviations from diffusion theory and radiative transport theory, whereas the total transmission measurements do not. For the thinnest sample (L/ℓ≃2) a reduction of the diffusion coefficient with a factor of 2 was observed.