Negative polarization phenomenon for large randomly oriented particles of irregular shapes

Abstract

The paper presents the phenomenon of negative polarization for large randomly oriented irregular particles what occurs as a result of interference between specific reflected waves associated with geometric optical trajectories of light beams for four refraction/reflection events. All calculations were performed for randomly oriented particles with a convex irregular shape. We used our physical optics approximation computer algorithm where the light scattered inside the particle consists of many plane-parallel beams. It is shown that the appearance of a backscattering peak is characteristic of the trajectories of light beams with any number of refraction/reflection events; however, only trajectories with four events (two internal reflections and two refractions at the exit faces of the particle) create negative polarization.