On Two Numerical Techniques for Light Scattering by Dielectric Agglomerated Structures

Smoke agglomerates are made of many soot sphcres, and their light scattering response is of interest in fire research. The numerical techniques chiefly used for theoretical scattering studies are the method of moments and the coupled dipole moment. The two methods have been obtained in this tutorial paper directly from the monochromatic Maxwell curl equations and shown to be equivalent. The effects of the finite size of the primary spheres have been numerically delineated.