Light attenuation by disperse layers with a high concentration of oriented anisotropic spherical particles

An analysis is made of the applicability of Beer’s law to the calculation of coefficients of directed (coherent) transmittance of light-scattering media formed by oriented anisotropic spherical liquid-crystal droplets. It is shown on the basis of comparison with experimental data that the application of Beer’s law to a layer with a high concentration of anisotropic particles leads to large errors in the calculation of transmittance. The interference approximation, taking into account the interference of waves scattered by separate particles, leads to better agreement with the experiment than Beer’s law, which assumes a linear relation between the attenuation factor of a disperse medium and the particle concentration.