RAY SCATTERING BY AN ARBITRARILY ORIENTED SPHEROID .1. DIFFRACTION AND SPECULAR REFLECTION

Diffraction and reflection of an arbitrarily polarized plane wave by a n arbitrarily oriented spheroid in the short-wavelength limit are cons idered in the context of ray theory. A closed-form solution for both d iffraction and reflection is obtained, and the polarization character of the diffracted plus reflected electric field is obtained. It is fou nd that the magnitude of the reflected electric field is multivalued f or forward scattering. This is interpreted in terms of the variation o f the spheroid's Gaussian curvature at the points where grazing ray in cidence occurs.