Abstract

Recently, we described a geometric construction for determining the eigenvalues of the coherency matrix in three dimensions. We show that this leads directly to a representation of the three-dimensional degree of polarization in terms of a triangular composition plot, in which different polarization measures have simple properties and can be expressed in terms of the matrix invariants. This composition plot is an alternative to the spherical plot recently used to illustrate the degree of polarization in terms of entanglement.

©2012 Optical Society of America

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