Path-integral approach to strongly nonlinear composites

Abstract

We study strongly nonlinear disordered media using a functional method. We solve exactly the problem of a nonlinear impurity in a linear host and we obtain a Bruggeman-like formula for the effective nonlinear susceptibility. This formula reduces to the usual Bruggeman effective medium approximation in the linear case and has the following features: (i) It reproduces the weak contrast expansion to the second order and (ii) the effective medium exponent near the percolation threshold are $s=1,$ $t=1+\kappa ,$ where $\kappa$ is the nonlinearity exponent. Finally, we give analytical expressions for previously numerically calculated quantities.