Differential description and irreversibility of depolarizing light-matter interactions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic differential Jones formalism to better understand light depolarization caused by random media, revealing intrinsic metrics and an irreversibility property of depolarizing interactions.

Contribution

It presents a novel stochastic formalism for depolarization, providing physical insights and defining intrinsic metrics and irreversibility in depolarizing light-matter interactions.

Findings

Depolarization arises from interaction with fluctuating anisotropic media.

Intrinsic depolarization metrics naturally emerge from the formalism.

Depolarizing transformations are shown to be inherently irreversible.

Abstract

The widely-used Jones and Mueller differential polarization calculi allow non-depolarizing deterministic polarization interactions, known to be elements of the $SO^+(1,3)$ Lorentz group, to be described in an efficient way. In this Letter, a stochastic differential Jones formalism is shown to provide a clear physical insight on light depolarization, which arises from the interaction of polarized light with a random medium showing fluctuating anisotropic properties. Based on this formalism, several "intrinsic" depolarization metrics naturally arise to efficiently characterize light depolarization in a medium, and an irreversibility property of depolarizing transformations is finally established.