Electromagnetic Scattering from Inhomogeneous Dielectrics of Finite Extent

Abstract

In this paper a theory of scattering of electromagnetic waves from objects possessing an arbitrary space-dependent complex permittivity is developed. By means of two new variational principles, the analog of the so-called "augmented Born approximation" in quantum mechanics will be derived. The theory will be applied to the scattering of light from a homogeneous dielectric sphere in which case exact solutions are known. A comparison of the extinction coefficient as obtained from the exact solution to calculations within the augmented Born approximation show the latter to constitute an improvement over the Rayleigh-Gans approximation in many cases.