Polarimetric diffraction tomography

Diffraction tomography can directly probe the second-order statistical properties of a random scattering volume. In many sensing tasks, these second-order correlations are all that is necessary to perform classification. In this paper we have generalized the theory of diffraction tomography to include polarized input fields and scattering from anisotropic samples. When the scattering formulation is generalized to the vector form, we must consider the mutual coherency matrix. Because the mutual coherency matrix does not commute with the medium scattering matrix in general, the observed coherency matrix (or Stokes vector) depends on the coherence state of the incident beam. This feature is often overlooked in active polarimetry, and clearly points to the fact that extreme care must be taken when performing Mueller matrix polarimetry with coherent or partially coherent light.