The Debye Series and Its Use in Time-Domain Scattering

Abstract

In electromagnetic scattering of an incident beam by a single particle possessing a reasonably high degree of symmetry, the Debye series decomposes the partial wave scattering and interior amplitudes into the contributions of a number of intuitive physical processes. We describe the Debye series for scattering by a sphere, a coated sphere, a multi-layer sphere, a tilted cylinder, and a prolate spheroid. We also comment on the meaning of the various Debye series terms, and briefly recount the method by which the formulas of ray scattering can be derived from them. We also consider time-domain scattering of a short pulse by a single particle and describe the way in which the time-domain scattering signature naturally separates out the various Debye series terms. Lastly, we show how time-domain scattering further separates a number of cooperating sub-processes present in individual Debye series terms.