ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Green’s function integral equation methods (GFVIEM) which relate the electric or magnetic field at any position in a scattering configuration to the fields inside or on the surface of a scattering object. The field at any position can be expressed as the sum of a field being incident on the scatterer and a scattered field, where the latter is expressed as an overlap integral between a Green’s function and the fields inside or on the surface of the scattering object. The scattered field is thus described as a superposition of fields originating from a continuum of point sources either inside or on the surface of the scatterer whose strength is determined by the fields at that position. The GFVIEM originates from astrophysics where a related method known as the discrete dipole approximation (DDA) was developed for calculating scattering and absorption of light from interstellar dust grains.
