Depolarizing power and polarization entropy of light scattering media: experiment and theory
Abstract
We experimentally investigate the depolarizing power and the polarization entropy of a broad class of scattering optical media. By means of polarization tomography, these quantities are derived from an effective Mueller matrix, which is introduced through a formal description of the multi-mode detection scheme we use, as recently proposed by Aiello and Woerdman (arXiv:quant-ph/0407234). This proposal emphasized an intriguing universality in the polarization aspects of classical as well as quantum light scattering; in this contribution we demonstrate experimentally that this universality is obeyed by a surprisingly wide class of depolarizing media. This, in turn, provides the experimentalist with a useful characterization of the polarization properties of any scattering media, as well as a universal criterion for the validity of the measured data.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0412096,
title = {Depolarizing power and polarization entropy of light scattering media: experiment and theory},
author = {Graciana Puentes and Dirk Voigt and Andrea Aiello and J. P. Woerdman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0412096},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
16 pages, 3 figures