Internal dipole radiation as a tool for particle identification

Abstract

A numerical approach for the calculation of the internal dipole radiation associated with particles of arbitrary morphology is investigated by using the discrete-dipole approximation (DDA) method. The DDA and analytical solutions for the total radiated power and radiation pattern are compared in the case of spherical host particles. It is shown that the DDA can be quite accurate under the condition that m <or approximately 2, and mkd<0.5, where m is the refractive index of the host particle, k=2pi/lambda is the wavenumber in vacuum, and d is the distance between two adjacent dipoles in the DDA cubic dipole array. Furthermore, the DDA solutions for the dipole radiation patterns associated with nonspherical host particles are compared with their corresponding counterparts obtained from the finite-difference time-domain method. Excellent agreement between the two results is noted. The DDA method is also applied to the computation of the internal dipole radiation associated with simulated nonspherical sporelike particles. The results suggest that the internal dipole radiation patterns contain a great deal of information about the morphology and composition of the host particle.