Abstract
This work was inspired by the paper “Polarimetry of moonlight: A new method for determining the refractive index of the lunar regolith”, by Fearnside et al. [Icarus 2016, 268, 156–171], in which the authors show that the parameter of polarimetric anomaly describing the deviation from the Umov law solely is a function of the real part of the refractive index. Within their model, this parameter does not depend on the average particle size. We consider that the geometrical optics (GO) model by Fearnside et al. (2016) is oversimplified and, therefore, it is not applicable for the lunar regolith. In particular, this model is similar to other GO models that do not produce the negative polarization branch of the Moon. Most critically, experimental measurements of the lunar regolith and lunar simulants demonstrate that the parameter of polarimetric anomaly does depend on particle size. We show that the applications of the Fearnside et al. (2016) model in lunar optics (e.g., their lunar maps of the real part of the refractive index) must be considered with caution.
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