Abstract

In a depolarizing medium in which the optical properties are uniformly distributed, the logarithm of the Mueller matrix can be used to calculate the differential Mueller matrix. From the differential Mueller matrix, the 10 optical properties of a homogeneous depolarizing medium are recovered. A modified calculation is introduced for media showing small time-irreversal depolarization events. The benefits of this method are illustrated in the determination of circular dichroism and circular birefringence of a nickel sulfate hexahydrate crystal from spectroscopic Mueller matrix measurements.

© 2013 Optical Society of America

Number of independent parameters in the Mueller matrix representation of homogeneous depolarizing media

Oriol Arteaga
Opt. Lett. 38(7) 1131-1133 (2013)

Statistical meaning of the differential Mueller matrix of depolarizing homogeneous media

Razvigor Ossikovski and Oriol Arteaga
Opt. Lett. 39(15) 4470-4473 (2014)

Physical model of differential Mueller matrix for depolarizing uniform media

Vincent Devlaminck
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 30(11) 2196-2204 (2013)

Uniqueness of the differential Mueller matrix of uniform homogeneous media

Vincent Devlaminck and Razvigor Ossikovski
Opt. Lett. 39(11) 3149-3152 (2014)

Mueller matrix differential decomposition

Noé Ortega-Quijano and José Luis Arce-Diego
Opt. Lett. 36(10) 1942-1944 (2011)