Ray tracing sumulation of light scattering by spherical clusters consisting of particles with different shapes

To simulate light scattering in spherical clusters of large transparent particles, a Monte Carlo ray tracing is used. Three types of shape of constituent particles are considered including irregular randomly shaped particles. Phase curves of intensity and polarization are calculated for clusters with different numbers of particles and compared with those for corresponding semi-infinite particulate media. Our modeling shows the same tendency for all studied types of particle shape: the intensity scattering indicatrix tends to be isotropic with growth of the number of particles in the cluster from tens to thousands; multiple scattering in clusters weakens polarimetric features. Shadowing in large clusters may change polarization at large phase angles α from negative to positive for random irregular particles.