Effective-medium predictions of absorption by graphitic carbon in water droplets

Effective medium theories are valuable tools that can provide effective refractive indices of composite media whose constituents are much smaller than the wavelength of the illuminating radiation. Extended theories have been developed to remove this limitation on the constituent size. Although these extended theories are not derived without additional limitations, useful regions of applicability do exist. We examine an extended effective-medium approximation and show that its predicted absorption efficiencies obtained agree well with exact theoretical results obtained for a naturally occurring system of interest, water droplets containing carbon inclusions.