title: Light backscattering polarization patterns from turbid media: theory and experiment.
abstract: We present both experimental measurements and Monte-Carlo-based simulations of the diffusely backscattered intensity patterns that arise from illuminating a turbid medium with a polarized laser beam. It is rigorously shown that, because of axial symmetry of the system, only seven elements of the effective backscattering Mueller matrix are independent. A new numerical method that allows simultaneous calculation of all 16 elements of the two-dimensional Mueller matrix is used. To validate our method we compared calculations to measurements from a turbid medium that consisted of polystyrene spheres of different sizes and concentrations in deionized water. The experimental and numerical results are in excellent agreement.
authors.affiliation: Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4242, USA.
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Raković
authors.forename: G W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Kattawar
authors.forename: M B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Mehrubeoğlu
authors.forename: B D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Cameron
authors.forename: L V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rastegar
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Coté