Silvery fish skin as an example of a chaotic reflector
Open Access
- 8 December 1995
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences
- Vol. 451 (1943) , 579-584
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1995.0144
Abstract
The silvery reflectance in fish skin is studied using an idealized model of the two optical components, guanine and cytoplasm. A structure in which the thickness of both components are randomized over an interval gives a calculated reflectance in good agreement with the measured reflectance of two species in the family Trichiuridae, including the behaviour in the infrared. Existing ideas based on quarter-wave stacks, either tuned to different wavelengths or with a progression of optical thickness with depth, have been shown to be unsatisfactory. The random or `chaotic' structure is confirmed by electron microscopy of cross sections of fish skin. The random structure is an example of the phenomenon of optical localization in a biological system.Keywords
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