The effect of relative humidity on the polarization Mueller matrix under the oil smoke environment

Abstract

For the variation of the polarized Mueller matrix of oil smoke particles under different relative humidity levels, the polarized single scattering characteristics of oil smoke particles are studied by using the Mie scattering theory, and the multiple scattering simulation is implemented with the Monte Carlo method. Variation in relative humidity is achieved by changing in mixing of the oil smoke and the water fog particles during the same dry particle filling time. Using the 36 sets of polarized Mueller matrices method, the Mueller matrix patterns of oil smoke were calculated for four conditions of 0%, 10%, 40%, and 95% relative humidity, respectively. We can verify the simulation’s correctness from the simulation and the experimental results. Specifically, as the relative humidity increases, the size of the Mueller matrix pattern increases, and the patterns of m22, m33, and m44 related to the depolarization characteristic change significantly. Furthermore, the scattering depolarization coefficients of the Mueller matrix polar decomposition increase with the increasing relative humidity, with the ability of depolarization being continuously enhanced. This method determines differences in relative humidity using intuitive measurements of stabilized scattering patterns, which can present a theoretical basis for the impact of environmental variation on polarization detection.