The Transfer of Polarised Radiation in Homogeneous Water Bodies

TL;DR

This paper provides an analytic solution for polarized light transfer in homogeneous water, deriving key functions and distributions, with applications to simulations and a novel Fourier transform approach for radiative transfer models.

Contribution

It introduces an analytic solution for polarized radiative transfer in homogeneous water bodies and a concise Fourier transform formulation for azimuthal decoupling.

Findings

Derived vector bidirectional reflectance at water bottom

Computed asymptotic radiance distribution

Presented a Fourier transform method for radiative transfer models

Abstract

We give an analytic solution for the propagation of polarised radiation through a homogeneous water body. As corollaries we derive the vector bidirectional reflectance distribution function at the bottom of an infinitely deep water body and compute the asymptotic radiance distribution. These have applications to polarised radiative transfer simulation in the inhomogeneous setting. Of independent interest, we give a concise variant formulation of the azimuthal decoupling via a complex Fourier transform which is applicable to radiative transfer models in general.