27-10-2012, 11:38 AM
Light Scattering by an Infinite Circular Cylinder Immersed in an Absorbing Medium
ABSTRACT
Analytic solutions are developed for the single-scattering properties of an infinite dielectric cylinder embedded in an
absorbing medium with normal incidence, which include extinction, scattering and absorption efficiencies, the scattering phase
function, and the asymmetry factor. The extinction and scattering efficiencies are derived by the near-field solutions at the
surface of the particle. The normalized scattering phase function is obtained by use of the far-field approximation.
Computational results show that while the absorbing medium significantly reduces the scattering efficiency, it has little effect
on absorption efficiency. The absorbing medium can significantly change the conventional phase function. The absorbing
medium also strongly affects the polarization of the scattered light. However, for large absorbing particles the degrees of
polarization change little with the medium s absorption. This implies that if the transmitting lights are strongly weakened
inside the particle the scattered polarized lights can be used to identify objects even when the absorption property of the host
medium is unknown, which is very important for both active and passive remote sensing.