Efficient Calculation of the Electromagnetic Scattering by Lossless or Lossy, Prolate or Oblate Dielectric Spheroids

In this paper, we study the electromagnetic scattering of a plane wave by a prolate or oblate dielectric spheroid, which can be lossless or lossy. The presented efficient solution is obtained by applying a perturbation technique to the problem of the sphere using the spherical eigenvectors. This method allows a closed-form solution for the fields and the scattering cross sections, which is valid for small eccentricities of the spheroid. Alternatively, we construct the exact solution of the problem using the separation of variables in terms of the spheroidal eigenvectors and updated spheroidal algorithms that allow complex arguments. We compare the closed-form solution versus the exact solution and we conclude about its accuracy. Both polarizations are studied and numerical results are given for various values of the parameters.