Electric field Monte Carlo simulation of polarized light propagation in turbid media

Min Xu

doi:10.1364/opex.12.006530

Abstract

A Monte Carlo method based on tracing the multiply scattered electric field is presented to simulate the propagation of polarized light in turbid media. Multiple scattering of light comprises a series of updates of the parallel and perpendicular components of the complex electric field with respect to the scattering plane by the amplitude scattering matrix and rotations of the local coordinate system spanned by the unit vectors in the directions of the parallel and perpendicular electric field components and the propagation direction of light. The backscattering speckle pattern and the backscattering Mueller matrix of an aqueous suspension of polystyrene spheres in a slab geometry are computed using this Electric Field Monte Carlo (EMC) method. An efficient algorithm computing the Mueller matrix in the pure backscattering direction is detailed in the paper.

Highlights

The propagation of polarized light in turbid media is fundamental to many practical applications of considerable interest including remote sensing of clouds and imaging of colloidal suspensions and biological materials[1,2,3,4]
Light scattering involves a rotation of the Stokes vector to a local scattering reference frame and the multiplication of the Stokes vector by the 4 × 4 Mueller matrix which prescribes how polarized light is scattered by an isolated particle in that reference frame
We present a Monte Carlo method based on tracing the multiply scattered electric field to simulate the propagation of polarized light in turbid media

Summary

Introduction

The propagation of polarized light in turbid media is fundamental to many practical applications of considerable interest including remote sensing of clouds and imaging of colloidal suspensions and biological materials[1,2,3,4]. Many implementations of the above Monte Carlo approach to simulate polarized light propagation in turbid media. We present a Monte Carlo method based on tracing the multiply scattered electric field to simulate the propagation of polarized light in turbid media. In contrast with the conventional Monte Carlo approach based on tracing the Stokes vector, the Electric Field Monte Carlo (EMC) method traces the electric field and phase of light and makes it possible to simulate coherent properties of multiply scattered light.

Theoretical formalism

Backscattering speckle pattern

Backscattering Mueller matrix

Conclusion