ScattPy: A new Python package for light scattering computations

We present a Python package developed for computing optical properties of non-spherical particles. It gives a user friendly flexible framework that takes advantage of programming with the modern language supported by the abundant library of scientific packages. The framework is designed to include the methods and interfaces to third-party codes required to treat scatterers of different shape and structure. We describe the current state of our package called ScattPy, briefly outline its range of applicability and note its outstanding accuracy for inhomogeneous particles with a multilayered structure.We also demonstrate some advantages of the ScattPy in particular when performing large-scale computations. Such languages as Python are known to simplify the data input and allow one to include new classes and objects (e.g. those required to define new scatterer shapes) without recompiling the code. The main benefits come from their ability to organize easily the output data as a database. In the ScattPy we use the SQLite database and illustrate how it is utilized in our investigation of the phase function dependence on the shape, size and structure of spheroids. By comparing the time consumption of the ScattPy to that of an equivalent code written completely in FORTRAN we show that there can be no essential performance losses when using Python.

Research highlights► A new Python package for light scattering simulations, ScattPy, is presented. ► Homogeneous and multilayered spheroids and Chebyshev particles are handled. ► The SVM, EBCM and iPMM methods with a spherical basis are used. ► ScattPy is as fast as an equivalent code written completely in FORTRAN. ► Application to an analysis of the layered particle optical properties is discussed.