Understanding depolarizing behaviors of a medium in four specific scattering configurations

Abstract

A method that allows a deep understanding of polarization behaviors of a medium from measured Mueller matrices is always desirable. In this work, we propose a method that is based on the combination of the pseudo-polar decomposition and a serial-parallel decomposition of a measured Mueller matrix. The relations between the component matrices in polar decomposition and the Mueller-Jones matrices in Cloude decomposition are derived, which are then used to find contributions of the polarization parameters of a measured Mueller matrix to each Mueller-Jones matrix in Cloude decomposition. It is found that the weighting factors needed in Cloude decomposition are exactly the weighting factors required to reconstruct the original Mueller matrix representing the depolarizer in pseudo-polar decomposition. It is also found that the polarization behaviors of a measured Mueller matrix can be understood in four scattering configurations. This new understanding may reveal the light scattering characteristics in random anisotropic media.