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scottprahl / miepython

Mie scattering of light by perfect spheres
MIT License
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Scattering phase matrix #20

Closed nollety closed 1 year ago

nollety commented 2 years ago

Hi @scottprahl and thank you for a very useful Python package!

I noticed a method, mie_S1_S2, to compute the scattering amplitude functions, but no method to compute the scattering phase matrix (perhaps I miss it?) and I was wondering if this would be a feature that you'd be willing to have included in miepython?

In my application (radiative transfer for Earth observation), the knowledge of the scattering phase matrix lets one take polarisation into account, which is a significant improvement compared to unpolarised computations. But I don't know if this is something relevant for your application? From my understanding, deriving the scattering phase matrix from the scattering amplitude funtions is straightforward (e.g. with eqs. 5.2.105-6 in K. N. Liou (2002) - An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, Second Edition). If you are interested, I could prepare a pull request. :smiley:

scottprahl commented 2 years ago

@nollety A function to return a scattering matrix would be great --- it was on my todo list. I would be happy to review and accept a pull request. Ideally accompanied by a few tests.

nollety commented 2 years ago

Great, I'll be working on it then!

scottprahl commented 1 year ago

did you complete this by chance?

scottprahl commented 1 year ago

I see, you started a pull request. I will close this issue now.

nollety commented 1 year ago

did you complete this by chance?

Unfortunately no, I got stuck at the tests step ; I don't have reference scattering phase matrix data (with corresponding microphysical input parameters) that I could use for testing purposes. This is still on my to do list but I have struggled to find time to allocate to that, hopefully I'll find the test data soon!