Investigation of scattering of light by polar molecules

Abstract

This thesis reports a theoretical and experimental investigation of the scattering of light by polar molecules which are oriented in an external electric field. The stress is more on the theoretical part and less on experimental study as a laser source of high power demanded by the theory is not available. The oriented polar solecules under study are in some respects similar to nematic liquid crystalline medium. Motivation for the investigation is therefore from the study of scattering of light by liquid crystalline PAA (p—azoxyanisole) by chatelain [1,2] and Subramhanyam et al [5]. The orientation in this case is not likely to be very high. Expressions for intensity components of the light scattered as a function of the angle up U,being the angle between direction of observation of scattered light and the direction of light incident on the scatterer, have been derived for various orientations of the applied static electric field relative to direction of incident light. The analysis of the expressions has led to certain relationships between the expressions for the intensity components corresponding