Polarization dependence in electromagnetic inverse problems

Abstract

The complete description of electromagnetic scattering processes implies polarization since an electromagnetic scatterer acts like a polarization transformer. The main objective is to show that due to the vector nature of electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic remote sensing and inverse scattering techniques, if applied rigorously, require incorporation of polarization information into their formulation. By applying this approach to existing and some novel theories, remarkable improvements in quality and fidelity of the reconstructed profiles and/or images can be obtained. Thus there is ample justification for continuing efforts in developing methods and theories of vector inverse scattering for the electromagnetic polarization-dependent case or in the even more complicated seismic case of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</tex> - and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</tex> -wave interaction in elastic media as for example encountered in vertical seismic profiling.