On Rayleigh approximation for non-ellipsoids

Abstract

We consider polarizability of a small arbitrary shaped particle that is obtained from the electrostatic theory under the assumption of the uniform internal field. For ellipsoids, this assumption is known to be always correct and such a polarizability leads to the standard Rayleigh approximation. We show that application of our approximate polarizability provides acceptable results not only for particles close to ellipsoids, but also for scatterers of essentially different shapes.