Large Scale Simulations of Elastic Light Scattering by a Fast Discrete Dipole Approximation

Simulation of Elastic Light Scattering from arbitrary shaped particles in the resonance region (i.e., with a dimension of several wavelengths of the incident light) is a long standing challenge. By employing the combination of a simulation kernel with low computational complexity, implemented on powerful High Performance Computing systems, we are now able to push the limits of simulation of scattering of visible light towards particles with dimensions up to 10 micrometers. This allows for the first time the simulation of realistic and highly relevant light scattering experiments, such as scattering from human red — or white blood cells, or scattering from large soot — or dust particles. We use the Discrete Dipole Approximation to simulate the light scattering process. In this paper we report on a parallel Fast Discrete Dipole Approximation, and we will show the performance of the resulting code, running under PVM on a 32-node Parsytec CC. Furthermore, as an example we present results of a simulation of scattering from human white blood cells. In a first approximation the Lymphocyte is modeled as a sphere with a spherical inclusion. We investigate the influence of the position of the inner sphere, modeling the nucleus of a Lymphocyte, on the light scattering signals.