Structural correlations and dependent scattering mechanism on the radiative properties of random media

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how structural correlations and dependent scattering influence the radiative properties of disordered media composed of dual-dipolar particles, highlighting the dominant role of far-field interference.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of structural correlations and dependent scattering on radiative properties of dual-dipolar media, emphasizing the role of far-field interference.

Findings

Increasing surface stickiness enhances scattering coefficient.

Structural correlations significantly affect radiative properties.

Far-field interference dominates over dipole excitation modifications.

Abstract

The dependent scattering mechanism is known to have a significant impact on the radiative properties of random media containing discrete scatterers. Here we theoretically demonstrate the role of dependent scattering on the radiative properties of disordered media composed of nonabsorbing, dual-dipolar particles. Based on our theoretical formulas for the radiative properties for such media, we investigate the dependent scattering effects, including the effect of modification of the electric and magnetic dipole excitations and the far-field interference effect, both induced and influenced by the structural correlations. We study in detail how the structural correlations play a role in the dependent scattering mechanism by using two types of particle system, i.e., the hard-sphere system and the sticky-hard-sphere system. We show that the inverse stickiness parameter, which controls the interparticle adhesive force and thus the particle correlations, can tune the radiative properties significantly. Particularly, increasing the surface stickiness can result in a higher scattering coefficient and a larger asymmetry factor. The results also imply that in the present system, the far-field interference effect plays a dominant role in the radiative properties while the effect of modification of the electric and magnetic dipole excitations is more subtle. Our study is promising in understanding and manipulating the radiative properties of dual-dipolar random media.