Scattering order

When light propagates through a medium, it is scattered by the inhomogeneities of this medium (so called scattering centers). An incident wave, while scattering by the scattering centers, produces secondary waves, which also scatter, producing tertiary waves, etc. The number of scattering events that produced a given partial wave is called order of scattering: zeroth order is the incident wave, first order contains all the secondary waves (because there has been one scattering event), second order is tertiary waves (two scattering events), and so on.

Phase function

Scattering by a single scattering center results in an outgoing wave with distribution of intensities over scattering angles depending on the size, shape, and refractive index of the scattering center. The distribution of relative intensities is called phase function.

As an example, a phase function of scattering of unpolarized light with wavelength of \(500\,\mathrm{nm}\) by a \(10\,\mathrm{\mu m}\) water drop looks as follows:

In many cases it's possible to describe propagation of light in terms of rays, which simplifies computations. In this case we use the phase function computed from wave theory as an input, to calculate distribution of secondary, tertiary etc. rays.