Process / pipelinePolarization
Mueller-Stokes Calculus
Mueller-Stokes calculus is a mathematical framework for describing and analyzing the polarization properties of light, including partially polarized and unpolarized light. Grounded in George Gabriel Stokes' 1852 work on polarization parameters and extended by Hans Mueller in 1948, this formalism uses the four-component Stokes vector and the 4×4 Mueller matrix to track how optical systems transform polarization states.
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Sources
- Stokes, G. G. (1852). On the composition and resolution of streams of polarized light from different sources. Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 9, 399-416. link ↗
- Mueller, H. (1948). The foundations of optics. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 38(8), 661-644. DOI: 10.1364/JOSA.38.000661 ↗
- Goldstein, D. H. (2003). Polarized Light (2nd ed.). Marcel Dekker. link ↗