SCATTERING BY A RANDOM SET OF PARALLEL CYLINDERS

A theory of scattering by a finite number of cylinders of arbitrary cr oss section is presented. This theory is based on a self-consistent ap proach that identifies incident and scattered fields around each cylin der and then uses the notion of a scattering matrix in order to get a linear system of equations. Special attention is paid to the simplifie d case of a sparse distribution of small cylinders for low frequencies . Surprisingly, it is found that the classical rules of homogenization must be modified in that case. The phenomenon of enhanced backscatter ing of light is investigated from numerical data for a dense distribut ion of cylinders.