Pluto's fly-by by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 has revealed a dark reddish equatorial region, named Cthulhu, covered by a dark, non-icy material whose origin and composition have yet to be determined. It has been suggested that this material could form from the sedimentation of photochemical aerosols, originating from dissociation and ionisation processes in Pluto's high atmosphere (similarly to aerosols forming Titan's haze). This hypothesis is here further investigated by comparing New Horizons spectra collected both in the visible and the near-infrared to laboratory reflectance measurements of analogues of Pluto's aerosols (Pluto tholins). These aerosols were synthesised in conditions mimicking Pluto's atmosphere, and their optical and reflectance properties were determined, before being used in Hapke models. In particular, the single scattering albedo and phase function of Pluto tholins were retrieved through Hapke model inversion, performed from laboratory reflectance spectra collected under various geometries. From reconstructed reflectance spectra and direct comparison with New Horizons data, some of these tholins are shown to reproduce the photometric level (i.e. reflectance continuum) reasonably well in the near-infrared. Nevertheless, a misfit of the red visible slope still remains and tholins absorption bands present in the modelled spectra are absent in those collected by the New Horizons instruments. Several hypotheses are considered to explain the absence of these absorption features in LEISA data, namely high porosity effects or GCR irradiation. The formation of highly porous structures, which is currently our preferred scenario, could be promoted by either sublimation of ices initially mixed with the aerosols, or gentle deposition under Pluto's weak gravity.

Photochemical aerosols were detected as high as 350 km of altitude in Pluto's atmosphere during the New Horizons fly-by. These aerosols are thought to affect Pluto's climate, by acting as cooling agents, and the colours of Pluto's surface, in particular in the dark regions named Cthulhu and Krun and at the North Pole. Pluto atmospheric and surface models have so far used the optical constants of Titan aerosol analogues (tholins), whereas their chemical composition is known to differ from that of Pluto aerosol analogues. In order to provide a new set of optical constants for Pluto tholins, we synthesized analogues of Pluto's aerosols and determined with spectroscopic ellipsometry their optical constants from 270 to 2100 nm. Three types of samples were produced from N₂:CH₄:CO gas mixtures differing in their CH₄:N₂ mixing ratio, representative of different altitudes in Pluto's current atmosphere or different seasons or epochs of Pluto. Our analysis shows a strong absorption by Pluto tholins in the UV and visible spectral ranges, with k index of a few 10⁻¹ at 270 nm, in agreement with N- and O-bearing organic molecules. Pluto tholins are less absorbent in the near-IR than in the UV–Vis wavelength range, with k of a few 10⁻³ between 600 and 2100 nm. Our comparative study highlights the dependency of n and k indices to the CH₄:N₂ mixing ratio. Aerosols formed at different altitudes in Pluto's atmosphere or during different seasons or epochs of Pluto will therefore affect the budget of Pluto radiative transfer differently. The optical constants presented in this study were tested with a Pluto surface model and with a model of light scattering. The surface modelling results highlight the suitability of these optical constants to reproduce Pluto compositional observations in the visible spectral range by MVIC and LEISA. The atmospheric modelling results conclude that Pluto tholins absorb 5 to 10 times less than Titan tholins at 500 nm, and this lower absorption is consistent with Alice observations of Pluto's haze.