Particle shape as revealed by spectral depolarization

摘要

Remote detection of airborne biological agents is a problem of contemporary interest. At issue is the discrimination of scatter from such harmful species and the scatter from naturally occurring particles such as hydrosols, pollen, and dust. The feature that our detection scheme attempts to exploit is that the species of interest typically have a characteristic size and shape that produce a unique signature in the depolarization of the scattered light. Through the use of T-matrix calculations we demonstrate the effect and show processing algorithms for quantifying and interpreting the measurements. Simulations suggest that it is possible to retrieve an estimate of the aspect ratio from a measurement of the spectral behavior of the linear depolarization in either the forward-scatter or back-scatter regime.