Contribution to the Statistical Geometric Basis of Radiation Scattering

Abstract

We describe a number of formal properties of the hierarchy of correlation functions describing the statistical geometry of a random porous medium consisting of homogeneous matter and void regions. Our principal result concerns the determination of the average number of interparticle contacts in a randomly packed aggregate of monodisperse hard spheres. We indicate how this number can be determined, in principle, from the analysis of large angle scattering of radiation. We discuss the bearing of our result on the Debye ``random scatterers'' and the study of models of random close packing of spheres. We give a brief list of possible applications and open problems suggested by this field.