We calculate the total field scattered by a charged sphere immersed in a plasma using a unified treatment that includes the usual Mie scattering and the scattering by the Debye cloud around the particle. This is accomplished by use of the Dyadic Green function to determine the field radiated by the electrons of the Debye cloud, which is then obtained as a series of spherical vector wave functions similar to that of the Mie field. Thus we treat the Debye-Mie field as a whole and study its properties. The main results of this study are (1) the Mie (Debye) field dominates at small (large) wavelengths and in the Rayleigh limit the Debye field is constant; (2) the total cross section has an interference term between the Debye and Mie fields, important in some regimes; (3) this term is negative for negative charge of the grain, implying a total cross section smaller than previously thought; (4) a method is proposed to determine the charge of the grain (divided by a certain suppression factor) and the Debye length of the plasma; (5) a correction to the dispersion relation of an electromagnetic wave propagating in a plasma is derived.

• Received 23 June 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.62.1190