Light scattering by planetary-regolith analog samples: computational results

Abstract : We compute light scattering by a planetary-regolith analog surface. The corresponding experimental work is from Hadamcik et al. [1] with the PROGRA2-surf [2] device measuring the polarization of dust particles. The analog samples are low density (volume fraction 0.15 ± 0.03) agglomerates produced by random ballistic deposition of almost equisized silica spheres (refractive index n=1.5 and diameter 1.45 ± 0.06 μm). Computations are carried out with the recently developed codes entitled Radiative Transfer with Reciprocal Transactions (R2T2) and Radiative Transfer Coherent Backscattering with incoherent interactions (RT-CB-ic). Both codes incorporate the so-called incoherent treatment which enhances the applicability of the radiative transfer as shown by Muinonen et al. [3]. As a preliminary result, we have computed scattering from a large spherical medium with the RT-CB-ic using equal-sized particles with diameters of 1.45 microns. The preliminary results have shown that the qualitative characteristics are similar for the computed and measured intensity and polarization curves but that there are still deviations between the characteristics. We plan to remove the deviations by incorporating a size distribution of particles (1.45 ± 0.02 microns) and detailed information about the volume density profile within the analog surface.