Experimental study of copolarized light scattering by spherical metallic particles on conducting flat substrates

Abstract

We present light-scattering experiments for well-characterized random conducting surfaces composed of spherical particles on flat substrates. The experiments were carried out for both sparse (low particle-surface density) and dense targets by using particle sizes of the order of the incident wavelength (λ = 0.633 μm). We analyzed both small incidence angles and grazing incidence and present the results for both p and s polarizations. Also, we present the results of computer-simulated light-scattering experiments based on the extinction theorem for a one-dimensional, perfectly conducting surface model for comparison with the experimental results. This model is composed of an array of parallel cylinders upon a flat substrate whose separations follow an exponential distribution corresponding to a pure Poisson process. The possible relevance of these results to radar scattering from the sea surface is also briefly discussed.