Effects of absorption on multiple scattering by random particulate media: exact results.

We employ the numerically exact superposition T-matrix method to perform extensive computations of elec nottromagnetic scattering by a volume of discrete random medium densely filled with increasingly absorbing as well as non-absorbing particles. Our numerical data demonstrate that increasing absorption diminishes and nearly extinguishes certain optical effects such as depolarization and coherent backscattering and increases the angular width of coherent backscattering patterns. This result corroborates the multiple-scattering origin of such effects and further demonstrates the heuristic value of the concept of multiple scattering even in application to densely packed particulate media.

Single scattering by a small volume element.

Starting from first principles, we present a detailed analysis of the concept of single scattering of light by a small volume element filled with sparsely and randomly positioned particles. We first derive the formulas of the far-field single-scattering approximation, which treats the volume element as a single scatterer, and discuss its range of applicability, using for illustration exact T-matrix results for randomly oriented two-sphere clusters. Our second approach is to treat the volume element as a small cloud of particles and apply the so-called first-order-scattering approximation.