Polarizabilities for light scattering from chiral particles

Abstract

The coupled dipole method is used to calculate the circular intensity differential scattering (CIDS) from chiral particles. The particles are described by a collection of spherical or ellipsoidal dipoles. In the case of ellipsoidal dipoles, it is shown that triaxial polarizabilities have to be used to quantitatively describe the scattering matrix of the particle. For certain collections of ellipsoidal dipoles, the dipolar interactions may be neglected in calculating CIDS from the structure. The coupled dipole approximation also provides a convenient method for calculating CIDS from a one dimensional helical crystal.