Scattering From Model Nonspherical Particles: Theory and Applications to Environmental Physics, Second Edition

Abstract

Anyone who has ever seen blue sky, white clouds, or a rainbow, or who has ever held a glass of milk in one's hand, is familiar with light‐scattering phenomena. In all these cases, the characteristic color, or even a palette of colors (for the rainbow), is caused by the same physical phenomenon: the scattering of electromagnetic radiation, with wavelengths of about 400–700 nanometers, from molecular‐density fluctuations in the atmosphere, from water droplets in clouds, or from casein and fat particles in milk. In a broad sense, the scattering processes constitute the physical basis even for those phenomena that at first glance seem unrelated to scattering, which is usually associated with random deviations from the initial wave propagation. Nevertheless, such known optical phenomena as the reflection and refraction of a light beam on a dielectric interface and the appearance of two new beams with changed propagation directions and velocities can be treated as a result of interference of the incident wave and the multiply scattered waves from all excited molecules.