Excitation of morphology-dependent resonances and van de Hulst's localization principle.

When a laser beam scatters from a microparticle whose shape deviates from that of a sphere, a number of partial waves of the incident beam couple to a given partial wave of the scattered and interior fields. As a result, partial-wave coupling caused by small surface irregularities of a liquid droplet provides the mechanism for exciting low-radial-order morphology-dependent resonances.