On rainbows of inhomogeneous spherical droplets

The paper is devoted to the study of the intensity distributions and the angular spectra of the second and fifth rainbows of homogeneous and inhomogeneous spherical particles predicted by Lorenz-Mie theory. The results show that the distribution around the second rainbow angle for a homogeneous sphere of refractive index between 1.32 and 1.33 is due to the interference of the light after two or five internal reflections. The structure of the scattering diagram and the angular spectrum for homogeneous and radially inhomogeneous spheres are studied. For a homogeneous sphere we show that the second and fifth rainbows can be independently reconstructed by filtering the calculated spectrum. Since each order of rainbow penetrates the particle to different depths, such methods could be used to provide information about the refractive index profile or the temperature gradient of an inhomogeneous sphere. The Airy-like peaks of the second and fifth rainbows are closely connected with the refractive index profile, which is beneficial to the measurement of its refractive index profile or temperature gradient.