¹Yevgen Grynko,²Yuriy Shkuratov,¹Samer Alhaddad,¹Jens Förstner
Icarus (in Press) Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2022.115099]
¹Department of Theoretical Electrical Engineering, Paderborn University, Warburger Str. 100, 33102 Paderborn, Germany
¹Institute of Astronomy of Kharkiv National University, Sumska Str. 35, 61022 Kharkiv, Ukraine
Copyright Elsevier

We model negative polarization, which is observed for planetary regoliths at backscattering, solving a full wave problem of light scattering with a numerically exact Discontinuous Galerkin Time Domain (DGTD) method. Pieces of layers with the bulk packing density of particles close to 0.5 are used. The model particles are highly absorbing and have irregular shapes and sizes larger than the wavelength of light. This represents a realistic analog of low-albedo planetary regoliths. Our simulations confirm coherent backscattering mechanism of the origin of negative polarization. We show that angular profiles of polarization are stabilized if the number of particles in a layer piece becomes larger than ten. This allows application of our approach to the negative polarization modeling for planetary regoliths.