We present a classical many-body theory of the optical response of a molecular fluid. The unified treatment provides mutually consistent expressions for the dielectric constant, the refractive index, the optical extinction coefficient, and the optical scattering cross section. The theory treats a finite material system and handles all surface effects associated with transmitted and scattered light. The complex refractive index and the scattering cross section will be analysed in two future papers.
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Hynne et al. (1984) studied this question.