Light scattering characteristics of a small sphere: Resonant and directive scattering conditions

In this extended paper we discuss the directive scattering characteristics of small dielectric spheres. Particularly, a recently introduced heuristic method utilizing the Pade approximants of the Mie coefficients is presented. With this method the resonant conditions of the magnetic multipole resonances are extracted. We expand the described method for exploring the Kerker radiation conditions, i.e., maximum forward and backscattering, for the case of a dielectric, non-magnetic sphere. The presented and results enhance our physical intuition of the triggered mechanisms and can be readily used as guidelines for the design of Huygens sources and other all-dielectric composites.