Infrared Backscattering by Irregularly Shaped Particles: A Statistical Approach

Abstract

Shape can strongly affect scattering by particles at wavelengths near bulk absorption bands. An example is scattering by many components of the atmospheric aerosol at wavelengths in the transmission window centered around 10 μm. An exact solution to the problem of scattering by an irregular particle, even if it were available, would yield more detail than necessary. An alternative approach is to formulate the irregular particle scattering problem in terms of the kinds of averages inherent in the optical properties of an ensemble of particles. Such a statistical method has been applied to an ensemble of small irregular particles by averaging over a range of electromagnetic microstates, in this instance randomly oriented anisotropic oscillators (i.e., Rayleigh ellipsoids). Infrared backscattering spectra calculated by this method agree better with laboratory-measured spectra for ammonium sulfate particles than those calculated using Mie theory.