Context. Reflected light from giant planets is polarized by scattering, offering the possibility of investigating atmospheric properties with polarimetry. Polarimetric measurements are available for the atmospheres of solar system planets, and instruments are being developed to detect and study the polarimetric properties of extrasolar planets. Aims. We investigate the intensity and polarizatio...

We report a theoretical analysis showing that Rayleigh scattering could be used to monitor the growth of nanoparticles under arc discharge conditions. We compute the Rayleigh scattering cross sections of the nanoparticles by combining light scattering theory for gas-particle mixtures with calculations of the dynamic electronic polarizability of the nanoparticles. We find that the resolution of ...

The study of pulsed laser- and microwave-induced plasma interactions with atmospheric and higher pressure combusting gases requires rapid diagnostic methods that are capable of determining the mechanisms by which these interactions are taking place. New rapid diagnostics are presented here extending the capabilities of Rayleigh and Thomson scattering and resonance-enhanced multi-photon ionizati...

The extremely low loss of silica fibers has enabled the telecommunication revolution, but single-mode fiber-optic communication systems have been driven to their capacity limits. As a means to overcome this capacity crunch, space-division multiplexing (SDM) using few-mode fibers (FMF) has been proposed and demonstrated. In single-mode optical fibers, Rayleigh scattering serves as the dominant m...

By combining a quantum treatment of the radiation field with a superoperator formalism we present compact expressions for a broad variety of coherent and incoherent nonlinear optical signals. Spontaneous signals are classified according to the molecular coherence range: homodyne detected signals result from long range two particle coherence whereas Rayleigh and hyper-Rayleigh scattering are sho...

Temperature measurements using vibrational Raman scattering from molecular nitrogen were performed simultaneously with temperature obtained by Rayleigh scattering in the amplitude range between 12 and 30 km. The downward extension of the Rayleigh temperature described in this paper leads to the possibility of obtaining a continuous temperature profile from 12 to nearly 100 km. The temperature p...

We investigate Rayleigh scattering in dissipative optical lattices. In particular, following recent proposals [S. Guibal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 4709 (1997)]; C. Jurczak, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1727 (1996)]], we study whether the Rayleigh resonance originates from the diffraction on a density grating and is therefore a probe of transport of atoms in optical lattices. It turns out that this is not t...

The experimentally observed peak in the backward radiation from a liquid-solid interface at the Rayleigh angle is caused by a sharp increase in the otherwise relatively weak incoherent scattering from the inherent inhomogeneities of the solid. The increase of the incoherent backscattering is essentially a specular effect in contrast with the nonspecular, finite-beam effect predicted to cause th...

Planar Rayleigh scattering measurements using an ArF-excimerlaser have been performed to investigate helium mixing into air atsupersonic speeds. The capability of the Rayleigh scattering technique for flowvisualization of a turbulent environment is demonstrated in a large-scale, Mach 6facility. The detection limit obtained with the present setup indicates thatplanar, quantitative measurements o...