A quantity of considerable interest in studies of polarized light is the degree of polarization of a beam of radiation. Every transformation of Stokes parameters described by a Mueller matrix may change the degree of polarization. The nature of this change, however, is not so obvious (see, e.g., Ref. 1). The main purpose of this Letter is to present simple upper and lower bounds for the change ...

A semi-empirical model of the ensemble-averaged differential Mueller matrix for microwave backscattering from bare soil surfaces is presented. Based on existing scattering models and data sets measured by polarimetric scatterometers and the JPL AirSAR, the parameters of the co-polarized phase-difference probability density function, namely the degree of correlation and the co-polarized phase-di...

Recently, thermal treatment has been used for collagen tightening and tissue contour enhancement. It is important to monitor the condition of collagenous tissue during and immediately after thermal treatment. When collagen is denatured, birefringence is reduced and a change in polarization state occurs. In this study, Monte Carlo simulation for polarized light was used to calculate the degree o...

Local full Mueller matrix measurements in the Fourier plane of a microscope lens were used to determine the internal anisotropic ordering in periodic linear arrays of smectic liquid crystal defects, known as 'oily streaks'. We propose a single microstructure-dependent model taking into account the anisotropic dielectric function of the liquid crystal that reproduces the smectic layers orientati...

A parallel Finite-Difference-Time-Domain (FDTD) code has been developed to numerically model the elastic light scattering by biological cells. Extensive validation and evaluation on various computing clusters demonstrated the high performance of the parallel code and its significant potential of reducing the computational cost of the FDTD method with low cost computer clusters. The parallel FDT...

The classification of polarization elements, the polarization affecting optical devices which have a Jones-matrix representation, according to the type of eigenvectors they possess, is given a new visit through the Group-Theoretical connection of polarization elements. The diattenuators and retarders are recognized as the elements corresponding to boosts and rotations, respectively. The structu...