Description
Over the last ten years the cosmic dust laboratory (CoDuLab) has produced an important number of experimental phase functions (PF) and degree of linear polarization (DLP) curves for clouds of cosmic dust analogue particles. The experimental data are freely available at the Granada-Amsterdam Light Scattering database (www.iaa.es/scattering). The analogue samples comprise a wide range of sizes (sub-micron up to mm-sized grains), shapes, and compositions. In this talk I will discuss our current efforts to establish the link between dust physical properties (size, shape/structure, and composition) and the way they scatter light in all directions. From direct comparison of the experimental data with computations for homogeneous spherical particles I will show that the use of the spherical model for simulating the PF and DLP curves of irregular dust can produce dramatic errors in the retrieved composition and size of the scattering particles.
