title: Entropy of partially polarized light and application to statistical processing techniques.
abstract: We have analyzed entropy properties of coherent and partially polarized light in an arbitrary number of spatial dimensions. We show that for Gaussian fields, the Shannon entropy is a simple function of the intensity and of the Barakat degree of polarization. In particular, we provide a probabilistic interpretation of this definition of the degree of polarization. Using information theory results, we also deduce some physical properties of partially polarized light such as additivity of the entropy and depolarization effects induced by mixing partially polarized states of light. Finally, we demonstrate that entropy measures can play an important role in segmentation and detection tasks.
authors.affiliation: Physics and Image Processing Group, Fresnel Institute, Unité Mixte de Recherche 6133, Ecole Généraliste d'Ingénieurs de Marseille, Domaine Universitaire de Saint-Jérôme, 13397 Marseille 20, France. philippe.refregier@fresnel.fr
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Réfrégier
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Goudail
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chavel
authors.forename: Ari
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Friberg