Electric field Monte Carlo simulation of polarized light propagation in turbid media

A Monte Carlo method based on tracing the multiply scattered electric field is presented to simulate the propagation of polarized light in turbid media. Multiple scattering of light comprises a series of updates of the parallel and perpendicular components of the complex electric field with respect to the scattering plane by the amplitude scattering matrix and rotations of the local coordinate system spanned by the unit vectors in the directions of the parallel and perpendicular electric field components and the propagation direction of light. The backscattering speckle pattern and the backscattering Mueller matrix of an aqueous suspension of polystyrene spheres in a slab geometry are computed using this Electric Field Monte Carlo (EMC) method. An efficient algorithm computing the Mueller matrix in the pure backscattering direction is detailed in the paper.