Effect of host medium absorption on the radiative properties of dispersed media consisting of optically soft particles

Abstract

Light scattering by particles immersed in an absorbing host medium has been an important issue in many fields, such as ocean optics, atmospheric radiation, remote sensing and so on. The traditional theory ignores the effect of host medium absorption on particle scattering, which may result in inaccurate results. In this paper, the scattering coefficient, extinction coefficient and phase function of the dispersed medium consisting of optically soft particles are investigated with considering the effect of host medium absorption on particle scattering. The results are based on the recently developed Mie theory for the absorbing host medium. It is found that neglecting the host medium absorption on particle scattering will result in a small change in extinction coefficients but a great change in scattering coefficients. Meanwhile, the relative error of scattering coefficients caused by using the conventional Mie theory increases obviously with the increase of particle size and the absorption index of the host medium, while the relative error of extinction coefficients fluctuates with the particle size. Moreover, the relative error of scattering coefficients of polydisperse particles is more significant than that of monodisperse particles.