Field-component statistics of externally illuminated overmoded cavities

The /spl Lambda/ distribution describes the statistical behavior of the measured square of the electric or magnetic field in an externally illuminated overmoded cavity. An approximation of the individual phase-quadrature fields is derived from this distribution. Numerical evaluation of this approximation to the squared phase-quadrature fields convolved with itself shows good agreement (/spl plusmn/1% away from the tail of the distribution) with the original /spl Lambda/ distribution. Comparison of theoretically derived cable currents with experimental data exhibits considerably better than factor-of-two correspondence.