Mueller-polarimetry of soil and vegetation in the visible I: Depolarization metrics

Abstract

In this paper the Mueller polarimetry is applied to study the four natural samples in visible (λ = 632.8 nm): soil, sand, clay and moss. To quantify separability of these samples based on their Mueller matrices we analyze their experimental Mueller matrices by calculating a number of single value depolarization metrics (degree of polarization, average degree of polarization, depolarization index, Q(M)-metric) for each sample in in-plane and out-of-plane geometry of experiment. The results obtained show that all depolarization metrics are sensitive to the sample's polarization properties. The most effective identifier is Q(M)-metric in both experimental geometry.