We quantitatively investigate the contribution of large dust particles to the polarimetric response in comets using the light-scattering properties of model agglomerated debris particles. We demonstrate that large, supermicron-sized particles have a decreasing role on the degree of linear polarization at phase angle α ≤ 80°, and the effect of particles greater than 10 μ m is minimal. At larger phase angles, they may only slightly increase the measured percent of polarization by up to 1%. Omitting the effects of these particles in modeling the observations only slightly affects the retrievals of the microphysical properties of dust in comets and could lead to a small underestimation of the index in a power-law size distribution and population of weakly absorbing dust particles.

中文翻译：

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超微粒子对彗星光散射的贡献很小

我们使用模型附聚的碎屑颗粒的光散射特性，定量研究了大尘埃颗粒对彗星极化响应的贡献。我们证明，大的超微米尺寸的颗粒在相角α≤80°时对线性极化程度的影响减小，大于10μm的颗粒的影响最小。在较大的相位角下，它们可能只会将测得的偏振百分比略微提高多达1％。忽略这些粒子在建模观测结果中的作用只会稍微影响彗星中尘埃的微物理性质的恢复，并可能导致幂律尺寸分布和弱吸收尘埃粒子数量的指标被低估。