The discrete dipole approximation for simulation of light scattering by particles much larger than the wavelength

In this manuscript we investigate the capabilities of the Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA) to simulate scattering from particles that are much larger than the wavelength of the incident light, and describe an optimized publicly available DDA computer program that processes the large number of dipoles required for such simulations. Numerical simulations of light scattering by spheres with size parameters x up to 160 and 40 for refractive index m=1.05 and 2 respectively are presented and compared with exact results of the Mie theory. Errors of both integral and angle-resolved scattering quantities generally increase with m and show no systematic dependence on x. Computational times increase steeply with both x and m, reaching values of more than 2 weeks on a cluster of 64 processors. The main distinctive feature of the computer program is the ability to parallelize a single DDA simulation over a cluster of computers, which allows it to simulate light scattering by very large particles, like the ones that are considered in this manuscript. Current limitations and possible ways for improvement are discussed.

Convergence of the discrete dipole approximation. II. An extrapolation technique to increase the accuracy

We propose an extrapolation technique that allows accuracy improvement of the discrete dipole approximation computations. The performance of this technique was studied empirically based on extensive simulations for 5 test cases using many different discretizations. The quality of the extrapolation improves with refining discretization reaching extraordinary performance especially for cubically shaped particles. A two order of magnitude decrease of error was demonstrated. We also propose estimates of the extrapolation error, which were proven to be reliable. Finally we propose a simple method to directly separate shape and discretization errors and illustrated this for one test case.

Convergence of the discrete dipole approximation. I. Theoretical analysis

We performed a rigorous theoretical convergence analysis of the discrete dipole approximation (DDA). We prove that errors in any measured quantity are bounded by a sum of a linear and quadratic term in the size of a dipole d, when the latter is in the range of DDA applicability. Moreover, the linear term is significantly smaller for cubically than for non-cubically shaped scatterers. Therefore, for small d errors for cubically shaped particles are much smaller than for non-cubically shaped. The relative importance of the linear term decreases with increasing size, hence convergence of DDA for large enough scatterers is quadratic in the common range of d. Extensive numerical simulations were carried out for a wide range of d. Finally we discuss a number of new developments in DDA and their consequences for convergence.