Core-shell particle model for optical transparency in glass ceramics

The light scattering from particles in a glass ceramic is calculated for a particle model comprising a crystalline core and a surrounding shell, created by nucleation and diffusive processes from the original homogeneous glass, with diffusing atoms limited to the core-shell volume. The scatterings from core and shell are found to cancel in first order for small particles within the approximations of the Rayleigh-Debye theory. The residual scattering varies as the inverse eighth power of wavelength and is most pronounced in the backscatter geometry. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.