Abstract
An expansion of the incident Gaussian beam in terms of the cylindrical vector wave functions natural to an infinite cylinder of arbitrary orientation is presented. With such an expansion, the problem of interaction between a couple of Gaussian beams and an infinite cylinder is studied in the framework of the generalized Lorenz-Mie theory. As an example, for the case of a couple of tightly focused Gaussian beams propagating perpendicularly to the cylinder axis, the scattering characteristics are described in detail, and numerical results of the normalized differential scattering cross section are evaluated.