Development of polarization speckle based on random polarization phasor sum.

Abstract

The random-walk approach has been extended and applied to study the development of polarization speckle by taking the vector nature into account for stochastic electric fields. Based on the random polarization phasor sum, the first and second moments of the Stokes parameters of the resultant polarization speckle have been examined. Under certain assumptions about the statistics of the component polarization phasors that make up the sum, we present some of the details of the spatial derivation that lead to the expressions for the degree of polarization and the newly proposed Stokes contrast that are suitable for describing the polarization speckle development. This vectorial extension of the random walk will provide an intuitive explanation for the development of the polarization speckle.