Rayleigh Scattering Cross Sections

The significance of the electric and magnetic polarizability tensors in low frequency scattering is emphasized. In the particular case of perfectly conducting, rotationally symmetric bodies with plane‐wave illumination, it is shown how the entire Rayleigh‐scattered field can be expressed in terms of just three tensor elements, functions only of the geometry of the body. Inequalities satisfied by these elements are used to establish optimum lower bounds on the scattering cross sections, and, in addition, the elements themselves are examined analytically and computationally for a variety of shapes. Some of the implications of these results are discussed.