  Wave propagation in coherently absorbing disordered media is generally
modeled by adding a complex part to the real part of the potential. In such a
case, it is already understood that the complex potential plays a duel role; it
acts as an absorber as well as a reflector due to the mismatch of the phase of
the real and complex parts of the potential. Although this model gives expected
results for weakly absorbing disordered media, it gives unphysical results for
the strong absorption regime where it causes the system to behave like a
perfect reflector. To overcome this issue, we develop a model here using
stochastic absorption for the modeling of absorption by "fake", or "side",
channels obviating the need for a complex potential. This model of stochastic
absorption eliminates the reflection that is coupled with the absorption in the
complex potential model and absorption is proportional to the magnitude of the
absorbing parameter. Solving the statistics of the reflection coefficient and
its phase for both the models, we argue that stochastic absorption is a
potentially better way of modeling absorbing disordered media.
