Abstract

A coherence-based description of the Lyot depolarizer illuminated by polychromatic light of any spectral density distribution is proposed as a generalization of the formulas provided for symmetrical spectra by Burns [J. Lightwave Technol. 1, 475 (1983) [CrossRef]  ] and Mochizuki [Appl. Opt. 23, 3284 (1984) [CrossRef]  ]. The structure of the derived expressions is explained in physical terms, and a numerical comparison with the previous solutions is performed. The results of the numerical analysis show that the proposed description, when applied to any configuration of a two-segment anisotropic depolarizer, is fully equivalent with the Mueller–Stokes calculus for broadband light. Following this consistency, the range of accuracy of the formula by Mochizuki has been verified.

©2012 Optical Society of America

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