Depolarization of Light in Atomic Fluids

Abstract

The experimental value of the polarizability anisotropy of a fluid is found to be an increasingly smaller fraction of the computer-calculated dipole-induced dipole anisotropy as the density is increased. This leads to the conclusion that the distortion of the polarizability of an individual atom from spherical symmetry produces an anisotropy which opposes and finally dominates the dipolar density anisotropy in determining the intensity of the depolarized light scattering.