Optical caustics associated with the primary rainbow of oblate droplets: simulation and application in non-sphericity measurement.

A vector ray tracing (VRT) model is developed to simulate optical caustic structures in the primary rainbow region of light scattering from oblate droplets. The changes of the optical caustic structures in response to shape deformation of oblate droplets are investigated. Then the curvature calculated from the simulated rainbow fringes is compared with that from the measured rainbow fringes and good agreement is found. Furthermore, according to the generalized rainbow patterns and the relation between aspect ratio and curvature of the rainbow fringe, non-sphericities in terms of aspect ratio of an oblate water droplet is measured with high measurement accuracy.