Nondipole optical scattering from liquids and nanoparticles

Nondipolar contribution to optical scattering in liquids and nanoparticle suspensions has been discerned for the first time from the dominant electric dipole scattering by assigning the observed polarization and azimuthal angular distribution of scattered polarized light to pure magnetic dipole and/or electric quadrupole radiation and ruling out other (the impurity of laser polarization, multiple scattering, optical activity, and optical anisotropy) explanations. The observed scattering has potential use in the optical study of nanoparticles.