A Table of Some Coherency Matrices, Coherency Matrix Factors, and Their Respective Mueller Matrices

Abstract

Many books on polarization give tables of Mueller matrices. The coherency matrix has been found useful for interpretetion of the Mueller matrix. Here we give a table of Mueller matrices M, coherency matrices C, and coherency matrix factors F for different polarization components and systems. F is not given for some complicated nondeterministic cases. In many cases, though, F has a very simple form. In particular, we give expressions for F for the general case of an homogeneous elliptic diattenuating retarder. Different coordinate systems for describing diattenuating retarders are compared, on a generalized retardation sphere, analogous to the Poincaré sphere. For the general homogeneous deterministic case, expressions for the Mueller matrix have particularly simple forms for Cartesian or stereographic coordinates in generalized retardation space.