Laser irradiation and heating of spherical particles

The internal and scattered fields of the Mie problem are determined with the vector multipole method of classical electrodynamics, giving a complete treatment of the derivation. Both popular phase conventions for the complex representation of the fields are treated in detail, clarifying distinctions necessary for valid results. The expressions for the internal electric field are used to study the behavior of the source function for a wide range of size parameters and complex refractive indices.

The source function is inserted in the differential equation of heat con duction and solutions are obtained from orthogonal function expansion for the approximation of constant thermal and optical properties and from finite difference differential approximation for the general case. Using these solutions, several specific cases of photoabsorptional heating and thermal diffusion in laser irradiated water drops are examined.

A number of source function and temperature plots are given for illustration, and a brief discussion of non-monochromatic laser pulses and indications of other elaboration are included.