Optical resonance scattering of a dielectric sphere of arbitrary size illuminated by polarized Airy beams

The optical resonance scattering of a dielectric sphere of arbitrary size illuminated by a polarized Airy beam is studied using the generalized Lorenz-Mie theory (GLMT). The electric field is derived using the vector angular spectrum decomposition method (VASDM). The beam shape coefficients (BSCs) are obtained using the multipole expansion method involving vector spherical wave functions (VSWFs). The resonance scattering characteristics are calculated using the GLMT by subtracting a non-resonant background of a perfectly conducting impenetrable sphere. The effects of beam polarization (i.e., linear, circular, radial, azimuthal, and mixed), the attenuation parameter gamma and the dimensionless transverse scale k omega(0) of the incident Airy beam on the scattering and extinction, "resonance" and "interference" efficiencies are examined. Moreover, the scattering efficiency for a perfectly conducting sphere as well as the three-dimensional (3D) scattering directivity patterns of the normalized dimensionless far-field scattering intensity and its resonance counterpart are calculated and plotted. The analysis of the resonance scattering shows that the energy efficiency is not the mere sum of resonance and perfectly conducting background terms; there is an interference between the two denoted by Q(sca)(inter f) , which strongly affects the resonance extinction and scattering efficiencies. The results presented here are of some importance in studying the optical resonance scattering of polarized Airy beams in applications involving imaging, particle sizing, radiation forces and torques to name a few areas of research. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.