Volume 17, number 1 OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS April 1976

A SIMPLE MODEL FOR DIFFUSE REFLECTION

J. David ZOOK
Honeywell Corporate Research Center,
Bloomington, Minnesota 55420, USA

Received 8 August 1975, first revised manuscript received 19 November 1975,

second revised manuscript received 8 January 1976

Diffuse reflection from a matte nonabsorbing inhomogeneous medium such as white paint or paper can be described
by a simple model in which light rays enter the volume of medium and then undergo a random walk until they reemerge
from the surface. Lambert's law of diffuse reflection is an immediate consequence of the random walk. Another conse-
quence of the volume interaction is that the light emerges from a different point than where it enters. This spreading of
the light was measured for BaSO4 white reflectance paint and for several kinds of paper. The random walk model implies
a diffusion equation which makes predictions that are in reasonable agreement with the experiments. The spreading is
proportional to an interaction length which, in this model, represents the range of distances that light rays penetrate be-
fore beginning their random walk.

1. Introduction Although no surface is known that strictly tbllows

Lambert's law of diffuse reflection states that the
luminance (or radiance) of a surface is constant, in-
dependent of the viewing angle, and independent of
the direction of the illumination. This law was first
stated by Lambert* in 1760 based on the observation
that the moon and planets appear to be unitbrmly
bright even though the angle of illumination and tile
angle of viewing relative to tile normal obviously vary
widely over tile surface. Usually Lambert's law is
stated as
l = lo cos O,
where I is the luminous or radiant intensity (watts/
steradian or lumens/steradian) and 0 is the angle be-
tween the surface normal and the viewing angle [ 1 - 3 ] .
Tile cos 0 factor is the ratio of the apparent surface
area to the actual surface area, so that eq. (1) is con-
sistent with constant luminance or radiance. The law
can be generalized to state that the reflected light is
unpolarized, and is independent of the polarization
of the source [4].
* A survey and critique of the early literature is given in ref.
[1].
Lambert's law, a large number of surfaces exist for
which it holds approximately. These are "matte" or
"flat" surfaces as opposed to "glossy" or "shiny" sur-
faces which contain a significant component of spec-
ular reflection. Becuase of its simplicity and conve-
nience, Lambert's law serves as the definition of a
uniform diffuser and is widely used in photometry
and in radiation transfer. In spite of this, it has been
said that no simple model or theoretical basis for
Lambert's law exists [1,5]. The first explanation was
offered by Bougier in 1762 [1,2] based on a micro-
facet model which supposes that a matte surface con-
(1)
sists of small mirrors, set at all possible inclinations.
Recent developments in tile theory of scattering from
rough surfaces has been smnmarized by Bechmann
[5]. References to experimental work are given by
Sparrow and Cess [31 •
Eq. (1) also serves as the definition of diffuse emis-
sion, and is usually presented in standard texts as a
sort of axiom, the truth of which is ahnost self-evident
[6]. It is indeed evident that thermal emission from
a cavity in a body at uniform temperature (black body
radiation) should obey eq. (1) because for a given
energy, all normal modes of the radiation field are
equally populated. However, it is not so obvious that

77
Volume 17, number 1 OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS
therlnal emission from dielectric or nretallic bodies
with smooth surfaces, is described by eq. (1). In this
case, electromagnetic theory predicts variations from
eq. (1), but these become significant only at large val-
ues of 0 13] • Certainly in the case of reflection from
matte surfaces, eq. ( i ) is even less obvious, because
tile optical properties of the surface, the randomness
of surface height and surface slope and the wavelength
of light relative to the scale of roughness are factors
to be considered.
The present discussion applies to the r e f e c t i o n
from matte surfaces where tile interaction does not
occur on the surface. Rather, light enters into the
volume of the material and is multiply scattered with
little or no attenuation until it reemerges at the sur-
face. This type of interaction should occur in white
diffuse r e f e c t o r s such as paint, paper, perhaps even
snow, where the material consists of small transparent
particles having a higher index of refraction than the
media in which they are imbedded. The theory of
scattering from rough surfaces mentioned above is
not directly applicable to a volume interaction.
2. The model
The simplest possible model of such a process is
a ray picture in which the reflected rays undergo a
random walk starting at some point within the vol-
ume until they emerge at the surface. In the case of
a very porous material the distance a ray enters be-
fore being scattered is related to the surface rough-
ness which in turn is related to tile porosity of the
material. An alternative viewpoint is that each scat-
tering center divides the rays into an isotropically
scattered beam and an unscattered beam. Thus each
scatterer in the incident beam acts as the starting
point for a random walk. Lambert's law is an innne-
diate consequence of this model because if tile walk
is truly random the scattered photons within any
volume element will have m o m e n t u m vectors uni-
formly distributed on a sphere in m o m e n t u m space,
giving equal radiance in all directions. After a suffi-
cient number of randomizing scattering events any
correlation between the initial and final plane of po-
larization would be lost so that the uniform distribu-
tion applies to b o t h polarizations. Thus, with this
model diffuse r e f e c t i o n becomes very similar to
78
April 1976
elnission fromn a cavity (blackbody radiation), which
is characterized by isotropic intensity and by Lambert's
law [2,3,7].
One purpose of the present paper is to point out
that, because of the volume interaction, light emerges
from a different point than where it enters. The
spreading of light is readily naeasurable and the ran-
dom walk model implies a diffusion equation which
makes predictions that are in reasonable agreement
with experinrent, in spite of the use of the simplified
model.
The main feature of a random walk is that the
mean square displacement is proportional to the num-
ber of steps (collisions) N,
r 2 = NI 2, (2)
where l is tire step length (mean free path). The nun>
bet of steps, in turn, is proportional to t, the time of
the walk. A relationship of this form holds even if the
steps are not completely random, such as in tile theo-
ry of polymer structure, where successive bonds (ran-
d a m steps) may be at a fixed bond angle, but are able
to rotate freely about tile bond (see, for example, ref.
[8] ). If we consider n(r, t) to be the number of pho-
tons per unit volume, or equivalently, the energy den-
sity, then eq. (2) implies the diffusion equation:
an/~t = D g2n (3)
as was shown by Einstein 4:. If we assume no absorp-
tion, the photon or energy density must also obey
the continuity equation
an~at = - v . J , (4)
where J is the flux density or exitance. Thus (3) and
(4) imply that
d = D gn, (5)
and we are interested only in the steady-state condi-
tion, an~at = O.
The simplest case is that in which the light begins
tile random walk at a point a distance b below the
surface. In terms of diffusion this case is represented
by a point diffusion source and we need to solve La-
place's equation for a point source. The boundary
* See ref. [8], p. 350, for a statement of Einstein's deriva-
tion. Credit for developing the relationship between random
walks and diffusion is due to L. Bachelier, according to ref.
[9]. Chapters 3 and 14 of the latter discuss random walks.
Volume 17, number 1 OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS April 1976

Ii
IRIS , IE '

DIFFUSE
I REFLECTOR~

[ LASER BEAM
REDUCER BEAM
SPLITTER

Fig. 1. Arrangement for measuring the spatial distribution of reflected light. The width of the incident beam from the laser is
exaggerated to show the action of the beam reducing lens, which focusses the beam to a waist (plane wave) at the objective lens.
The objective lens projects a magnified image of diffuse reflecting object onto the photo diode.

condition is that the surface must represent an infi-
nite sink. In the analogous case of heat flow which is
also described by the diffusion equation, an infinite
sink implies a constant temperature surface and the
component of heat flow tangential to the surface is
zero. The situation is also analogous to the electro-
static problem of a point charge a distance b from a
conducting plane; it can be solved in a trivial way by
the method of images. The result is that the light in-
tensity at the surface (analogous to the normal com-
ponent of electric field) is given by
¢
J(r) = ( r2 + b2)3/2 ,
where e is a constant and r is the cylindrical coordi-
nate, measured from the point source.
Experimentally it is easier to measure the inte-
grated flux passing through a circle of radius r than
to measure J(r) in eq. (6). This can readily be accom-
plished by the use of a beam splitter and an objective
lens which images the surface onto a photodetector
with a variable aperture, as shown in fig. 1. The re-
flected light is collected from a circle whose radius
is equal to that of the variable aperture (labelled
"iris" in fig. 1) divided by the magnification of the
objective. Thus the amount of light collected is pro-
portional to the integral of eq. (6):
y
Io(r)=f 4r)rdr= 1 1
0 Vql + (r/b) 2 ' (7)
where the constant c has been chosen to give I0(oo) = 1
Within the depth of field tile illuminating beam
can be considered to be a parallel beam, larger than
typical particle size in the object. All the scattering
will not occur at a single point, but rather will occur
along a certain interaction length. Thus the reflected
radiation is a sum of contributions from scatterers at
different distances b:
(6)
Ylo(r/b ) dN(b)
I(r) - y dN(b) ' (8)
where dN is strength of the point sources within the
range b and b + db.
For example, if each scattering event removes a
certain fraction of energy from the beam, and the
number of scatterers per unit volume is constant, we
would have an exponential law:
dN/db = e x p ( - b / a 1 )"
In this case eq. (8) gives
79
Volume 17, number 1
I (a;)
r = t - ~ a lr 2rrrIHl(~--l)
a7 1I/ (~1)1'
where H 1 is the Struve function and 111 is a Bessel
function [10].
Alternatively, the material can be viewed as being
rough and porous, so that different rays enter differ-
ent distances before interacting. If tile surface rough-
ness is describable by a gaussian function, then
dN/db = exp (- b2/a~),
and eq. (8) becomes:
I r r2 r
\a2/ 2
where erfc is the complimentary error function. A
plot of eqs. (9) and (10) with a 2 = 1.56 a t shows that
the curves are almost superimposed, so that it would
be quite difficult to differentiate experimentally
among these cases and other cases SUCh as a linear
distribution with a cutoff.
The amount of light collected depends on the col-
lection angle of the objective. If we assume that eq.
(1) applies, then the fraction of the total ligllt col-
lected by the objective is
f cos0 dgZ 0m
collection angle 2n fo cos 0 sin 0 dO
2n f~)/2cos 0 sin 0 dO
cos 0 df2
hemisphere
sin 2 011.1 = NA 2 ,
where 0 m is the maximum collection angle subtended
by the objective, and, by definition, sin 0m is the nu-
merical aperture, NA, of the lens. In view of eqs. (7)
and (8) the ratio of the light collected from a circle
of radius r to the incident ligl~t is given by
R(r) = NA 2 R I(r),
where R ~ is the hemispherical reflectance or albedo
of the diffuse reflector and I is given by eq. (8).
One degree of freedom in the experiment is the
choice of the illuminating spot size. As we show be-
low, the value of b is the range of 20 p m , so that the
focussed beam should have a depth of field on the
order of 20 ~m. 'Fhe depth of field is hf2/w 2 where w
is the width of the beam at the objective and f i s the
focal length of the objective. Thus the F-number,
f/w, of the illuminating beam should be about 5,
80
OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS April 1976
giving an illuminating spot size* of 5(4X/n) = 4 ~m in
(9)
diameter. For an objective lens focal length of 3 ram,
tile incident beam diameter at the principal plane o f
the object should be 3 mm/5 = 0.6 ram, and should
have a plane wavefront. The beam reducing lens in
fig. t focusses the laser beam to a waist at the objec-
tive. In the above example, the beam would have an
F-number of 0.6 mm/(4X/n) ~ 750 and a focal length
of 750 trim if the beam diameter at the beam reducer
is 1 ram.
3. Comparison with experiment
The results of measurements taken with a 1 mW
HeNe laser and a lens with NA = 0.85 on white re-
flectance paint [12] (BaSO4) and two types of paper
are shown in fig. 2, normalized with respect to an
aluminum front surface mirror. The white reflectance
paint has been proposed as a secopdary standard for
reflectance measurements [ 1 2 - 1 4 ] . In the case of
the papers several thicknesses were used because of
tile non-zero transmission of a single sheet. The meas-
ured value of R(r) depends on the focussing of the
objective lens, and the values vary somewhat from
point to point. If the focussing is not optimum, lower
values of R(r) will be obtained at small values of r,
and quadratic rather than linear behavior is observed.
Tile results shown were obtained by focussing with
crossed polarizers to avoid focussing on the front sur-
ill) face, especially in the case of the glossy surface. A
complicating factor in the experiment is that available
beam splitters act as fairly good polarizers so that
measurements had to be made of both components
of the reflected light. The results shown in fig. 2 refer
to the total reflected light (square root of the sum
of the squares of the components).
(12) The transmission of objective lens undoubtedly
depends on angle and this was not corrected for in
the experiment. However, the correction is not likely
to be large. The reflected light is approximately lam-
bertian for all points in the object, and therefore all
the points in the image plane are nearly equally af-
fected by the unequal transmission of the lens as a
function of angle. Evidence for this is that a good
microscope objective such as the one used will show
* Ref. [11 ] gives a brief review of laser beam optics.
Volume 17, number 1 OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS April 1976

.7 I I t I I I I I I i t

MINIMUM RADIUS OF /
iNCIDENT BEAM J
.6 j.u

rr
.5
Z
_o
I-
t.) .4
rt"
h
r~ .5
UJ
I.-
IJ
.2 'dr ~'~ 13 GLOSSY WHITE PHOTO
_J y : 2::S :::R E PHOTO
O
L)
.I

1 I I 1 I I i I I I
0 20 40 60 80 IO0 120 140 160 180 200/.~
RADIUS r

Fig. 2. Spatial distribution of reflected light. The radius r is the radius of the iris divided by the magnification of the objective.
The points are experimental averages of several measurements. The lines are plots of eq. (9) combined with eq. (12), having pa-
rameters al = 18, 26, and 40 #m and NA2R~ = 0.64, 0.6, and 16 from top to bottom.

an image of a uniformly illuminated diffusely scatter-
ing object that is just as bright at the edges as it is at
the center. Thus the uneven transmission affects all
image points in essentially the same way.
Although it is predicted in the theory discussed
above, the linear behavior at small values o f r was un-
expected when first observed. According to eq. (6)
the intensity is constant for r ~ b. The integrated in-
tensity R(r) is thus proportional to area and would
be expected to vary as r 2. However, the inclusion in
eq. (8) of diffusion sources having non-zero values of
dN/db at b = 0 (surface contributions) results in lin-
ear behavior at small r. Effectively then, eqs. (9) and
(10) include surface as well as volume contributions
to the reflected light.
The prediction of linear behavior is actually an
approximation based on illumination from a line
source, whereas the incident beam has a finite width
which causes quadratic behavior for values of r less
than the beam width. The approximation can be
quite good if the m i n i m u m beam size compatible with
the desired depth of field is chosen as discussed above.
In our experiment, the beam size of 4 # m was less
(after magnification by the objective lens) than the
m i n i m u m iris size.
It was found that the light reflected at small values
of r was fairly well polarized parallel to the incident
polarization. Such polarization behavior is to be ex-
pected since light that has undergone only one scat-
tering event would be included. The linear behavior
at small values o f r is a basic feature that was retained
even when measurements were taken with crossed
polarizers, a technique used to exclude specular re-
flections. We note that Billmeyer et al. [13] have
found that when crossed polarizers were used in bidi-
rectional reflectance measurements on pressed BaSO4,
lambertian behavior is observed for all angles of il-
lumination up to at least 85 ° (5 ° from grazing).
4. Conclusions
In summary, reflection from diffuse reflectors in-
volves a volume interaction as evidenced from spatial

81
Volume 17, number 1 OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS
spreading of reflected light. A very simple model of
the volume interaction is that the light rays follow a
random walk after entering a certain distance into
the medium. Lambert's law follows naturally from
this model which also predicts the spatial distribu-
tion of light as it emerges at the surface. Experiments
with focussed light at normal incidence give a meas-
ure of the surface roughness, or more precisely, an
interaction length, a, which represents the range of
distances light rays penetrate before beginning their
random walk.
Other experiments, for example, measurements of
the transmission of light by thin diffuse reflectors
such as paper, would provide additional tests of the
simple theory. More elaborate experiments and theo-
ries could provide a more detailed link between the
particle size and spacing and the parameter a. In any
case, it is hoped that the theory and experiments
presented here will give additional insight into the
nature of diffuse reflection and radiative transfer
that will prove helpful in the design of reflectors such
as paper, paints and coatings for solar energy conver-
sion.
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges helpful dis-
cussions with F.W. Billmeyer, P. Beckmann, C.W.
Erickson, and R. Henisch, who also provided the sam-
ple of white reflectance paint, and the able assistance
of R. Hegel with the experiments.
82
April 1976
References
[ 1] V.G.W. Harrison, Definition and Measurement of Gloss
(The Printing and Allied Trades Research Association,
London, 1945).
[2] J.W.T. Walsh, Photometry (Constable and Co., London,
Sec. Ed., 1953).
[3] E.M. Sparrow and R.O. Cess, Radiation Heat Transfer
(Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., Belmont, California, 1970).
[4] D.C. Cramer and M.E. Blair, Appl. Opt. 8 (1969) 1597
1605.
[5 ] P. Beckman, in: Progress in Optics, ed. E. Wolf, Vol. 6
(North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1967) p. 57.
[6] M. Born and E. Wolf, Principles of Optics, 3rd Ed.
(Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1965) p. 182;
M.V. Klein, Optics (Wiley & Sons, New York, 1970)
p. 124.
[7] M.A. Melvin, Am. J. Phys. 23 (1955) 508-510, and
references therein.
[8] C. Tanford, Physical Chemistry of Macromolecules
(Wiley & Sons, New York, 1961) 152-161.
[9] W. Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and
Its Applications, Vol. I, 2nd Ed. (John Wiley & Sons,
New York) p. 323.
[10] M. Abramowitz and I.A. Stegun, eds., Handbook of
Mathematical Functions, Nat. Bur. of Stand., Appl.
Mathem. Ser. 55 (1964).
[11] J.D. Zook and T.C. Lee, Appl. Optc. 11 (1972) 2140.
[12] F. Grum and G. W1. Luckey, Appl. Opt. 7 (1968) 2289-
2294.
[13] F.W. Billmeyer, Appl. Opt. 8 (1969) 737-750.
[ 14] F.W. Billmeyr Jr., D.L. Lewis and J.G. Davidson, Color
Engineering 9 (1971) 31-36.