Tool Used: FullWAVE, MOST
Mie’s solution to Maxwell’s equations, one of the primary formulations for modeling light-particle interactions, describes the scattering of an electromagnetic planewave off a homogeneous sphere. More broadly, the phrase Mie scattering is commonly used to refer to situations where the size of the scattering sphere is comparable to the wavelength of the light, rather than having a much smaller size (Rayleigh scattering) or a much larger size (optical scattering). For Rayleigh and optical scattering, simple and excellent approximations to Mie theory exist that are sufficient to describe the physical behavior. However, for Mie scattering, no simple approximation exists and the full analytic solution, which takes the form of an infinite series of spherical multipole partial waves, is required. Mie scattering arises in a wide variety of applications including atmospheric science, cancer detection and treatment, metamaterials, and parasitology.
FullWAVE, RSoft’s FDTD-based Maxwell equation solver, can be used to directly simulate Mie scattering and produces results in excellent comparison with Mie theory. In this application note, we simulate the Mie problem for a 3D dielectric sphere.