Abstract

Light scattering by chaotically oriented optically soft large particles of arbitrary shape is considered within the framework of the Rayleigh–Gans approximation. It has been shown that outside the forward direction, the scattering pattern has the dependence of $〈S〉\mathrm{\Delta }{k}^{-4}(1+{\cos }^2\theta )$, where $〈S〉$ is an average particle surface area, $\mathrm{\Delta }k$ is the difference between scattered and initial wave vectors, θ is the scattering angle, and this pattern is independent of particle shape. A simple approximating formula is suggested, which correctly describes the scattering pattern in the entire range of scattering angles. This formula is compared to the particular case of size-distributed spherical particles and is shown to have high accuracy. Also, it is shown that the inherent optical properties, as total, transport, and backward scattering coefficients, are determined by the specific particle surface area and the effective particle size.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

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