A dissymetry ratio optical technique as applied to scattering pattern recognition of differently shaped soot aggregates

We investigated the shape of soot aggregates as retrieved from light scattering measurements. In particular, the ratios of scattered light intensities at two angles, called the dissymmetry ratios (DRs), will be considered. These are attractive diagnostic tools as they are insensitive to variations in the complex refractive index (m=n+ik) and to the electromagnetic effect of set-interaction that each individual scatterer in the aggregate produces with itself depending on its finite size. The aim of the paper is both to correlate the DRs with the information about the aggregate shape and to establish what is the minimum number of scattering measurements to be performed to characterize the aggregate scattering patterns. The main results can be summarized as follows: (a) an independent evaluation of the primary spherule size is required in order to interpret the scattering data correctly; (b) some of the DRs can share common values for different morphologies when the number of primary spherules per aggregate is sufficiently high; in this respect, we demonstrate the significance of the dissymmetry ratio RVV(10°/90°) for the identification of the prevailing morphology of aggregates at different levels of agglomeration; (c) the information about light intensities scattered at three angles seems to suffice for the recognition of prevailing aggregate morphology.