Abstract

In an interesting paper published in 1975, Kerker¹ described small, nonabsorbing, compound ellipsoids which have the property that when they are illuminated in certain directions they do not scatter any radiation. Such bodies are examples of so-called nonscattering scatterers, which play an important role in connection with questions of uniqueness of solutions to inverse scattering problems. A class of deterministic model media that behave, within the accuracy of the first-order Bom approximation, as nonscattering scatterers for any finite number of directions of incidence was found by Devaney². The present paper is concerned with the question of whether Devaney’s result may be generalized for all possible directions of incidence. We show that this is not possible. Specifically, we demonstrate that within the accuracy of the first-order Born approximation there are no media that are nonscattering scatterers for all directions of incidence. Both deterministic and random media are considered.

© 1991 Optical Society of America