Scattering of electromagnetic waves by a system of two dielectric spheroids of arbitrary orientation

By means of modal series expansion of the incident, scattered, and transmitted electric and magnetic fields in terms of appropriate vector spheroidal eigenfunctions an exact solution is obtained to the problem of electromagnetic scattering by two dielectric spheroids of arbitrary orientation is obtained. The incident wave is considered to be a monochromatic uniform plane electromagnetic wave of arbitrary polarization and angle of incidence. To impose the boundary conditions at the surface of one spheroid, the electromagnetic field scattered by the other spheroids is expressed as an incoming field to the first one, in terms of the spheroidal coordinates attached to it, using rotational-translational addition theorems for vector spheroidal wave functions. The solution of the associated set of algebraic equations gives the unknown expansion coefficients. Numerical results are presented in the form of plots for the bistatic and backscattering cross sections of two lossless prolate spheroids having various axial ratios, center-to-center separations, and orientations