ABSTRACT
Nowadays, electromagnetic probing of various objects represents a widely used and powerful method of experimental physics [1-3]. We have already encountered some of its applications in interferometry and holography in Chapters 7 and 8, which were based on measuring the phase of an electromagnetic wave as it was traveling through or reected from some object. In this chapter, we will mainly focus on the scattering* of electromagnetic waves [4], aer having rst considered some aspects of light propagation in transparent isotropic media. Scattering occupies a special niche among measuring methods, as, in contrast to the majority of other optical methods, it actually allows the determination of local parameters of the object under investigation, rather than integrals either along a signal’s path through the object or over a range of directions, in which the object’s emissions are being observed. We stress, however, that we will not consider here nonlinear phenomena, and also the analysis in this chapter will be conned to the visible and infrared region of the spectrum. e X-ray region will be addressed in Chapter 10.
