2004/12/16 by Graciana Puentes, Dirk Voigt, Puentes, Graciana +5
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Optical Polarization and Ellipsometry #Optical and Acousto-Optic Technologies #Optics (physics.optics) #Random lasers and scattering media #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0412096
16 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2004/12/16 · openalex publication_date 2004/12/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.