Anisotropic Two-Dimensional Scattering: Comparison of Experiment with Theory

Anisotropic scattering from a semi-infinite medium exposed to a laser beam is studied. The situation is two-dimensional and cylindrical because the laser beam is incident normal to the purely scattering media. The back scattered radiation in the normal direction is predicted and measured as a function of the distance from the beam. The latex particles of uniform size with diameters ranging from 0.03 up to 1.011 μ are used as scattering centers in a water solution. The influence of anisotropic scattering shifts the maximum of the radial distribution of the scattered intensity to larger optical radii as the particle size increases. For large optical thicknesses, the asymmetry factor is used as a correlation coefficient to reduce the anisotropic results to those of isotropic scattering.