Enpolarization of light by scattering media

Abstract

The polarization of a coherent depolarized incident light beam passing through a scattering medium is investigated at the speckle scale. The polarization of the scattered far field at each direction and the probability density function of the degree of polarization are calculated and show an excellent agreement with experimental data. It is demonstrated that complex media may confer high degree of local polarization (0.75 DOP average) to the incident unpolarized light.