Abstract

A study is made of the fields that arise at points interior to a pair of spheres that cooperatively scatter electromagnetic radiation. These bispheres are composed of spheres ranging in diameter from about one to ten wavelengths of the incident radiation, and the effects of various orientations of the pair with respect to that radiation are discussed. The structure of the internal fields under resonant and nonresonant conditions is examined for refractive indices ranging from 1.3 to 2.0. The center-to-center separation between the spheres is allowed to vary from the sum of their radii to ~100 radii. This study is a theoretical treatment of the problem, and two methods are utilized. One treats the bisphere as a single particle and involves matrix inversion, whereas the other technique casts the problem into an order-of-scattering context and thereby obviates matrix inversion. This latter procedure has only recently been applied to the problem of cooperative scattering by two or more spheres and, in essence, decomposes the scattered field of the bisphere into discrete interactions between fundamental constituents. The contribution of specific orders of scattering to the construction of the internal fields is considered where appropriate.

© 1988 Optical Society of America