TY - JOUR

T1 - Reducing shape errors in the discrete dipole approximation using effective media

AU - Zhu, Yingying

AU - Liu, Chao

AU - Yurkin, Maxim A.

N1 - National Natural Science Foundation of China (42375128); Graduate Research and Innovation Projects of Jiangsu Province (KYCX20_0954). We acknowledge the High Performance Computing Center of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology for their support of this work.

PY - 2023/12/18

Y1 - 2023/12/18

N2 - The discrete dipole approximation (DDA) simulates optical properties of particles with any given shape based on the volume discretization. These calculations cost a large amount of time and memory to achieve high accuracy, especially for particles with large sizes and complex geometric structures, such as mixed black-carbon aerosol particles. We systematically study the smoothing of the DDA discretization using the effective medium approximation (EMA) for boundary dipoles. This approach is tested for optical simulations of spheres and coated black-carbon (BC) aggregates, using the Lorenz-Mie and multiple-sphere T-Matrix as references. For spheres, EMA significantly improves the DDA accuracy of integral scattering quantities (up to 60 times), when the dipole size is only several times smaller than the sphere diameter. In these cases, the application of the EMA is often comparable to halving the dipole size in the original DDA, thus reducing the simulation time by about an order of magnitude for the same accuracy. For a coated BC model based on transmission electron microscope observations, the EMA (specifically, the Maxwell Garnett variant) significantly improves the accuracy when the dipole size is larger than ¼ of the monomer diameter. For instance, the relative error of extinction efficiency is reduced from 4.7% to 0.3% when the dipole size equals that of the spherical monomer. Moreover, the EMA-DDA achieves the accuracy of 1% for extinction, absorption, and scattering efficiencies using three times larger dipoles than that with the original DDA, corresponding to about 30 times faster simulations.

AB - The discrete dipole approximation (DDA) simulates optical properties of particles with any given shape based on the volume discretization. These calculations cost a large amount of time and memory to achieve high accuracy, especially for particles with large sizes and complex geometric structures, such as mixed black-carbon aerosol particles. We systematically study the smoothing of the DDA discretization using the effective medium approximation (EMA) for boundary dipoles. This approach is tested for optical simulations of spheres and coated black-carbon (BC) aggregates, using the Lorenz-Mie and multiple-sphere T-Matrix as references. For spheres, EMA significantly improves the DDA accuracy of integral scattering quantities (up to 60 times), when the dipole size is only several times smaller than the sphere diameter. In these cases, the application of the EMA is often comparable to halving the dipole size in the original DDA, thus reducing the simulation time by about an order of magnitude for the same accuracy. For a coated BC model based on transmission electron microscope observations, the EMA (specifically, the Maxwell Garnett variant) significantly improves the accuracy when the dipole size is larger than ¼ of the monomer diameter. For instance, the relative error of extinction efficiency is reduced from 4.7% to 0.3% when the dipole size equals that of the spherical monomer. Moreover, the EMA-DDA achieves the accuracy of 1% for extinction, absorption, and scattering efficiencies using three times larger dipoles than that with the original DDA, corresponding to about 30 times faster simulations.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85180131728&origin=inward&txGid=22dbe310c49281faa306f013c5f1ba22

U2 - 10.1364/OE.509479

DO - 10.1364/OE.509479

M3 - Article

C2 - 38178434

VL - 31

SP - 43401

EP - 43415

JO - Optics Express

JF - Optics Express

SN - 1094-4087

IS - 26

ER -