A new instrument, the Polarized Scanning Nephelometer (PSN), has been developed for measuring the complete scattering matrix of aerosol particles as a function of the scattering angle. The instrument measures directly the ensemble-averaged scattering matrix elements of the aerosol particles and can deduce all scattering matrix elements for scattering angles in the range 3.5° to 170° at two different wavelengths (445 nm, 633 nm). The PSN instrument features a number of different optical components including beamsplitters, polarizers, and quarter-wave plates. By using different combinations of orientation angles for the optical components, all the scattering matrix elements are obtained as a function of the scattering angles. Nitrogen gas was used to give a measure of the stray light suppression level of the instrument. Instrument performance in terms of the accuracy of the scattering matrices was verified quantitatively using homogeneous polydisperse spherical particles. For instance, in studies comparing the PSN measurements with Mie calculations, the average absolute relative errors of the scattering matrix elements for diethylhexyl sebacate (DEHS) droplets were within 0.02 and 0.025 at 445 nm and 633 nm, respectively.

已开发出一种新的仪器，即偏振扫描浊度仪（PSN），用于测量作为散射角函数的气溶胶颗粒的完整散射矩阵。该仪器直接测量气溶胶颗粒的总体平均散射矩阵元素，并可以推导出所有散射矩阵元素在两种不同波长（445 nm，633 nm）下散射角在3.5°至170°范围内。PSN仪器具有许多不同的光学组件，包括分束器，偏振器和四分之一波片。通过对光学部件使用取向角的不同组合，获得所有散射矩阵元素，它们是散射角的函数。使用氮气来测量仪器的杂散光抑制水平。使用均匀的多分散球形颗粒定量验证了仪器在散射矩阵精度方面的性能。例如，在将PSN测量值与Mie计算进行比较的研究中，癸二酸二乙基己酯（DEHS）液滴的散射矩阵元素的平均绝对相对误差在445 nm和633 nm处分别在0.02和0.025范围内。