Abstract

Scattered light for preferentially oriented ice crystals is divided into specular and diffuse components, where the specular scattering is created by horizontally oriented facets of fluttering crystals. The specular component for a fluttering thin plate modeling these crystals is found analytically. The solution obtained is a two-dimensional (2D) convolution of a geometric optics pattern depending only on flutter and an independent diffraction function. The geometric optics pattern is explicitly expressed through the probability density for particle tilts, and the diffraction function is taken in the Fraunhofer diffraction approximation. The 2D convolution calculated numerically reveals a cumulative enhancement of scattered light in the scattering domain center. Certain possibilities to retrieve both flutter parameters and particle sizes from the specular patterns are discussed.

© 2009 Optical Society of America

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