Spectral polarimetry in multiply scattering birefringent optically active media

物体发出和反射的光为我们提供了许多关于我们周围环境的有用信息。除了波长和强度之外，光束的一个非常有用的特性是它的偏振态，即垂直于传播方向的电场矢量的方向。当光穿过物体时，它的偏振状态会改变。因此，可以通过偏振态的改变来获得对象的属性。我们建议将我们的研究扩展到偏振光与混浊材料的相互作用。这项研究的长期目标是对生物组织进行偏振光评估。这类材料中的光经历的大量偏转会扰乱其偏振，从而可能没有任何有用的信息可供提取。然而，我们和其他人已经证明，在多次散射时，可以保留惊人数量的有用偏振信息。所提出的方法将量化混浊介质中许多不同波长的偏振损耗。然后，这些方法可用于表征混浊系统，如行星大气、生物组织或非晶态半导体。此外，还建议研究混浊介质的手性效应。手性是指一些材料的不对称性，这使得它们以不同的方式与偏振光相互作用。长期以来，这些相互作用一直被用于透明介质中，以探索其分子结构和组成的细节。这项工作是新颖的，因为它的意图是通过对多次散射光的偏振分析来量化光学厚度混浊介质中的手性效应。我们将在目前偏振测量专业知识的基础上，扩大我们的研究努力，以纳入多波长效应。然后，我们将评估在糖尿病患者中进行极化非侵入性血糖监测的可行性(因为葡萄糖是手性分子)。这是临床医学中一个重要的突出挑战，我们提议的极化研究将为成功解决这一问题做出贡献。

Light emitted and reflected by objects provides us with much useful information about our surroundings. In addition to its wavelength and intensity, one very useful property of an optical beam is its polarization state, or the orientation of the electric field vector perpendicular to the propagation direction. When light travels through an object, its polarization state will be changed. Hence the properties of the object can be obtained through the change in the polarization state. We propose to extend our research into polarized light interactions with turbid materials.  The long-term goal of the research is to perform polarized light assessment of biological tissues.  The numerous deflections experienced by the light in such materials will scramble its polarization such that there may not be any useful information left to extract. However, we and others have shown that a surprising amount of useful polarization information can be retained upon multiple scattering. The proposed methodology will quantify polarization loss in turbid media at many different wavelengths. These methods can then be used to characterize turbid systems such as planetary atmospheres, biological tissues, or amorphous semiconductors.  It is also proposed to investigate the effects of the "chirality" of the turbid medium. Chirality refers to the asymmetry of some materials, which casues them to interact with polarized light in distinctive ways. These interactions have long been used in TRANSPARENT media to probe the details of  its molecular structure and composition. The proposed work is novel in its intent to quantify chiral effects in optically thick TURBID media thru polarization analysis of multiply scattered light. We will build upon our current expertise in polarimetry and expand our research efforts to incorporate multi-wavelength effects. We will then assess the feasibility of polarimetric non-invasive glucose monitoring in diabetic patients (as glucose is a chiral molecule). This is an important outstanding challenge in clinical medicine, and our proposed polarization studies are well poised to contribute toward its successful resolution.