Topics in Particle and Dispersion Science

 
Fig. 1. Absorption of variously shaped gold spheroids at a vacuum wavelength of 647 nm (m_gold = 0.25 - 3.45i; Palik ED 1998) vs. the refractive index of the surrounding medium. For the spheroids, the polarization of the incident light is aligned along the principal axis a of the spheroid. The curves, from left to right, represent: red - oblate spheroid, a/b = 0.4, L = 0.588; green - oblate spheroid, a/b = 0.6, L = 0.478; magenta - sphere, a/b = 1, L = 0.333; blue - prolate spheroid, b/a = 0.6, L = 0.210; black - prolate spheroid, b/a = 0.4, L = 0.134, where a and b are the lengths of the spheroid half-axes, L is the geometrical depolarization factor (for example, Bohren CF and Huffman 1983, pp. 145-146). See also a numerical data file for this figure.