User Guide for the Discrete Dipole Approximation Code DDSCAT 7.3

TL;DR

DDSCAT 7.3 is an open-source software for electromagnetic scattering and absorption calculations of arbitrary targets, supporting complex geometries, periodic arrays, and advanced computational techniques.

Contribution

This paper provides a comprehensive user guide for DDSCAT 7.3, detailing new features, target support, and computational improvements over previous versions.

Findings

Supports arbitrary geometries and periodic arrays

Includes MPI, OpenMP, and MKL support for efficiency

Enables detailed near-field and scattering calculations

Abstract

DDSCAT 7.3 is an open-source Fortran-90 software package applying the discrete dipole approximation to calculate scattering and absorption of electromagnetic waves by targets with arbitrary geometries and complex refractive index. The targets may be isolated entities (e.g., dust particles), but may also be 1-d or 2-d periodic arrays of "target unit cells", allowing calculation of absorption, scattering, and electric fields around arrays of nanostructures. The theory of the DDA and its implementation in DDSCAT is presented in Draine (1988) and Draine & Flatau (1994), and its extension to periodic structures in Draine & Flatau (2008), and efficient near-field calculations in Flatau & Draine (2012). DDSCAT 7.3 includes support for MPI, OpenMP, and the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL). DDSCAT supports calculations for a variety of target geometries. Target materials may be both inhomogeneous and anisotropic. It is straightforward for the user to "import" arbitrary target geometries into the code. DDSCAT automatically calculates total cross sections for absorption and scattering and selected elements of the Mueller scattering intensity matrix for user-specified scattering directions. DDSCAT 7.3 can efficiently calculate E and B throughout a user-specified volume containing the target. This User Guide explains how to use DDSCAT 7.3 to carry out electromagnetic scattering calculations, including use of DDPOSTPROCESS, a Fortran-90 code to perform calculations with E and B at user-selected locations near the target. A number of changes have been made since the last release, DDSCAT 7.2 .