Fm. Kahnert et al., Application of the extended boundary condition method to homogeneous particles with paint-group symmetries, APPL OPTICS, 40(18), 2001, pp. 3110-3123
The numerical evaluation of surface integrals is the most time-consuming pa
rt of the extended boundary condition method (EBCM) for calculating the T m
atrix. An efficient implementation of the method is presented for homogeneo
us particles with discrete geometric symmetries and is applied to regular p
olyhedral prisms of finite length. For such prisms, an efficient quadrature
scheme for computing the surface integrals is developed. Exploitation of t
hese symmetries in conjunction with the new quadrature scheme leads to a re
duction in CPU time by 3 orders of magnitude from that of a general EBCM im
plementation with no geometry-specific adaptations. The improved quadrature
scheme and the exploitation of symmetries account for, respectively, 1 and
2 orders of magnitude in the total reduction of the CPU time. Test results
for scattering by rectangular parallelepipeds and hexagonal plates are sho
wn to agree well with corresponding results obtained by use of the discrete
-dipole approximation. A model application for various polyhedral prisms is
presented. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.