Effect of the pair-structure factor of a particulate medium on scalar wave scattering in the first Born approximation

Using scattering matrices and the angular spectrum representation of waves, we develop the analytical theory of scattering of random scalar waves from random collections of particles, valid under the first Born approximation. We demonstrate that in the calculation of far-field statistics, such as the spectral density and the spectral degree of coherence, the knowledge of the pair-structure factor of the collection is crucial. We illustrate our analytical approach by considering a numerical example involving scattering of two partially correlated plane waves from a random distribution of spheres.