Photoacoustic determination of optical absorption to extinction ratio in aerosols.

The photoacoustic technique has been used in conjunction with an optical transmission measurement to determine the fraction of light absorbed in cigarette and acetylene smoke aerosols. At 0.5145-microm wavelength,the absorption-to-extinction fraction is 0.01 +/- 0.003 for cigarette smoke and is in excellent agreement with predictions from Mie theory for smoke particles having a refractive index of 1.45-0.00133i and a median diameter in the 0.15-0.65-microm range. For acetylene smoke the absorbed fraction was 0.85 +/- 0.05.