User Guide for the Discrete Dipole Approximation Code DDSCAT (Version 5a10)

By B. Draine, P. Flatau. 2000

376 citations recorded by the source corpus.

DDSCAT.5a is a freely available software package which applies the "discrete dipole approximation" (DDA) to calculate scattering and absorption of electromagnetic waves by targets with arbitrary geometries and complex refractive index. The DDA approximates the target by an array of polarizable points. DDSCAT.5a requires that these polarizable points be located on a cubic lattice. DDSCAT.5a10 allows accurate calculations of electromagnetic scattering from targets with "size parameters" 2 pi a/lambda < 15 provided the refractive index m is not large compared to unity (|m-1| < 1). The DDSCAT package is written in Fortran and is highly portable. The program supports calculations for a variety of target geometries (e.g., ellipsoids, regular tetrahedra, rectangular solids, finite cylinders, hexagonal prisms, etc.). Target materials may be both inhomogeneous and anisotropic. It is straightforward for the user to import arbitrary target geometries into the code, and relatively straightforward to add new target generation capability to the package. DDSCAT automatically calculates total cross sections for absorption and scattering and selected elements of the Mueller scattering intensity matrix for specified orientation of the target relative to the incident wave, and for specified scattering directions. This User Guide explains how to use DDSCAT.5a10 to carry out EM scattering calculations. CPU and memory requirements are described.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea55139efd62b61d2821f01494eba48f02e1ff9a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Aerospace Engineering

1. Guosheng Liu
2. Alfons G. Hoekstra
3. Maxim A. Yurkin
4. Alan J. Geer
5. F. Baordo

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Guosheng Liu
2. Alfons G. Hoekstra
3. Maxim A. Yurkin
4. Ping Yang
5. Lei Bi

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Guosheng Liu
2. Alfons G. Hoekstra
3. Maxim A. Yurkin

Citations in the corpus

• The discrete dipole approximation: an overview and recent developments (2007, positive): “The DDA was further developed by Draine and coworkers [2-5], who popularized the method by developing a publicly available computer code DDSCAT [6].”
• A database of microwave single-scattering properties for nonspherical ice particles (2008, methodology): “The DDA model developed by Draine and Flatau (2000) is used to compute the single-scattering properties of ice particles.”
• The discrete dipole approximation for simulation of light scattering by particles much larger than the wavelength (2007, background): “Its main feature (distinctive from other DDA codes) has always been the capability of running on a cluster of computers, parallelizing a single DDA computation, in contrast with e.g. DDSCAT [5] that allows farming several instantiations of a DDA simulation to different processors.”
• Approximation of Single Scattering Properties of Ice and Snow Particles for High Microwave Frequencies (2004, background): “A more detailed validation may be found in Draine and Flatau (1994). b. Cloud ice particles and snowflakes Due to the long wavelength of microwave radiation, only scattering signals from large ice particles are strong enough to be detected by a microwave sensor.”
• Comparison between discrete dipole implementations and exact techniques (2007, methodology): “Draine and Flatau give a rule of thumb for the dipole size in the user manual of DDSCAT [33].”