Under certain conditions these particles undergo spontaneous ordering into regular crystalline arrays. Ackerson employs small angle light scattering to study the dynamics of this crystallization process. Large angle light diffraction is used to characterize the crystal structure, similar to Bragg scattering in atomic systems. Dynamic light scattering is used as a sizing technique to characterize the spheres themselves or to characterize the collective modes in concentrated suspensions of particles. Multiple scattering can produce severe problems in trying to characterize dense suspensions.
Various experiments test a radiative transport theory of scattering in dense suspensions.
Academic Ackerson earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1976.