Abstract
Interaction of light with extended random and/or complex media, such as biological tissue samples, involves continuous changes in coherence and polarization of the propagating beams. Therefore, the classic Stokes-Mueller calculus based on the local (single-point) transformation on the order of intensity (not field) cannot completely and uniquely characterize such interaction. We suggest to use generalization of the Stokes-Mueller calculus to two-point field correlations in which both the Stokes vector and the Mueller matrix remain real-valued. We also envision that the proposed generalization will enable the unique solution of the inverse problems relating to soft biological sample characterization from polarimetric measurements.
