Scattering of electromagnetic beams by spherical objects

The scattering of a Gaussian beam wave by a spherical object is treated exactly in terms of the vector wave functions without any restriction on the size or the position of the scatterer. Expressions obtained for the powers absorbed and scattered are given as linear combinations of the well-known Mie coefficients and can be readily applied to numerical computation. The corresponding problem for the scattering of a beam produced by a laser operating in the ${\text{TEM}}_{01}^{*}$ mode is also solved.