Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Scattering And Absorption of Light in Planetary Regoliths
Published on: July 1, 2019
Far-field Lorenz-Mie scattering in an absorbing host medium. II: Improved stability of the numerical algorithm
Michael I Mishchenko1, Janna M Dlugach2, James A Lock3
1NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA.
None:
A recently developed FORTRAN program computing far-field optical observables for spherical particles in an absorbing medium has exhibited numerical instability arising when the product of the particle vacuum size parameter and the imaginary part of the refractive index of the host becomes sufficiently large. We offer a simple analytical explanation of this instability and propose a compact numerical algorithm for the stable computation of Lorenz-Mie coefficients based on an upward recursion formula for spherical Hankel functions of a complex argument. Extensive tests confirm an excellent accuracy of this algorithm approaching machine precision. The improved public-domain FORTRAN program is available at https://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/mmishchenko/Lorenz-Mie.html.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Mechanistic Models: Compartment Models in Algorithms for Numerical Problem Solving
In individual population analyses, different algorithms are employed, such as Cauchy's method, which uses a...
Numerical Calculations
The solution to a problem is obtained using different methods. While manually solving algebraic symbols is one of the most common methods, the graphical method is often preferred. Computers...
Pilot and Numeric Relaying
How Data are Classified: Numerical Data
Quantitative data may be either discrete or continuous. All quantitative data that take on only specific numerical...
Nuclear Stability
To hold positively charged protons together...
RNA Stability

