Optical characteristics of non-spherical scatterers

1. Our introductory notes presented by V.G.Farafonov give the definitions of such basic optical characteristics of non-spherical scatterers as amplitude and scattering matrices, different cross-sections, asymmetry factor, etc. Special attention is paid to the differences between these definitions and those for spherical scatterers. The notations used are close to those utilized in the well-known book of Mishchenko et al. (2000). The PostScript version of the notes is here.