Experimentally determined characteristics of the degree of polarization of backscattered light from polystyrene sphere suspensions

The degree of polarization (DOP) can be used to characterize the polarization-maintaining ability of a beam of polarized light propagating through a turbid medium. Experiments on polystyrene (PST) sphere suspensions show that, the linearly polarized light propagating through the PST sphere suspension of Rayleigh scatterers has better polarization-maintaining ability, whereas the circularly polarized light propagating through the PST sphere suspension of Mie scatterers has better polarization-maintaining ability. Moreover, helicity flipping occurs to the circularly polarized light propagating in the extremely weak PST sphere suspensions or on the surface of suspensions. In addition, the DOP is dependent on the wavelength of incident light. The results can be helpful to image in turbid media by use of diffuse backscattered light.