Introduction to light scattering by Gaussian random particles

Background, current status, and future prospects are offered for “Light scattering by Gaussian random particles: Ray-optics approximation” [1]. The stochastic geometry of the random particle is called the Gaussian random sphere. The radial distance of the Gaussian sphere is lognormally distributed. Two logarithmic radial distances at a given great-circle angle apart relate to one another according to the covariance function. Sample Gaussian particles can be conveniently generated using a Legendre polynomial expansion for the covariance function and a spherical harmonics expansion for the logarithmic radial distance. The ray-optics approximation consists of the geometric-optics and forward-diffraction parts fully accounting for polarization. It is valid for particles much larger than the wavelength of incident light and with central phase differences much larger than unity. The numerical ray-tracing algorithms are general and, in principle, applicable computationally to arbitrarily shaped non-spherical particles.