Abstract The Mueller matrix is a mathematical description of how light altered by an optical element or sample under study. It describes both intensity (irradiance) and polarization changes, including reduction the total polarization. spectroscopic ellipsometry has gained recent popularity in optics semiconductor communities as effective means to characterize complex structures anisotropic mate...

introduction: the human skin is an active medium from the optical point of view. therefore, the diagnostic and therapeutic techniques employing light are increasing. current optical techniques are based on the measurement of the intensity of reflected absorbed or backscattered light from or within skin. studies have shown that biological tissues, and in particular skin, demonstrate polarization...

We present a Mueller matrix decomposition based on the differential formulation of the Mueller calculus. The differential Mueller matrix is obtained from the macroscopic matrix through an eigenanalysis. It is subsequently resolved into the complete set of 16 differential matrices that correspond to the basic types of optical behavior for depolarizing anisotropic media. The method is successfull...

A complete and minimum set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a real 4x4 matrix to be a physical Mueller matrix is obtained. An additional condition is presented to complete the set of known conditions, namely the four conditions obtained from the non-negativity of the eigenvalues of the Hermitian matrix H associated with a Mueller matrix M and the Transmittance Condition. Using the pro...

A double-beam polarization-sensitive system based on optical coherence tomography was built to measure the Mueller matrix of scattering biological tissue with high spatial resolution. The Jones matrix of a sample can be determined with a single scan and subsequently converted into an equivalent nondepolarizing Mueller matrix. As a result, the system can be used to measure the Mueller matrix of ...

In this article, we address the question of significance of the parameters of differential Mueller matrix formalism. We show how the concept of mean value and uncertainty of the optical properties recently introduced to depict this differential matrix can be related to the random fluctuations of these optical properties. From the layered-medium interpretation introduced by Jones [J. Opt. Soc. A...