Abstract: | The azimuthal angular dependence of the depolarized component of the light scattered from spherulitic materials is derived by an algebraic method that avoids the difficult angular integrations of the usual approach. The result appears as a sum of products of two factors, a molecular factor, that depends only on the structure and the scattering angle θ, and a geometrical factor that depends only on the azimuthal angle ? and the scattering angle θ. The molecular factors are evaluated for models of spherulitic structure that assume a constant tilt of the optical polarizability tensor. The radial distribution, in principle, is arbitrary, and an evaluation for the layered spherulite is made. If the tilt angle is ω when the azimuthal patterns depend only on a linear combination of P2(cos ω) and P4(cos ω), where Pn(x) is the Legendre polynomial of order n. In our theory the VH scattering pattern is a four-leaf clover whose axes are restricted by the theory to be at either 0 or 45° to the polarization directions. |