Scattering and Absorption by Elongated Aerosol Particles

Recently we developed a new technique, the iterative extended boundary condition method, which is suitable for calculating the scattering and absorption by elongated particles in a broad frequency range, including at resonance. This paper briefly describes this technique, illustrates its capabilities, and presents the results of its most recent extensions. This includes the implementation of a sectioning procedure and the use of a new segmentation method for calculating scattering by very long oriented chains of aerosols. Results of absorption cross sections in two different frequency ranges, visible and infrared, and for two different polarizations, parallel and end-fire polarizations, will be presented. The range of validity of some reported relationships between scattering from a single particle and from coagulated particles are discussed. It is shown that in the end-fire polarization case the sum of the absorption by separate n particles (P _sum) is more than the absorption by a chain of n coagulated particles (P _end-fire), while in the parallel polarization case, the ratio between P _parallel/P _end-fire may be as high as a factor of 4. This observation emphasizes the importance of taking the polarization into account in calculating light scattering by elongated chains of aerosols.