Spectral polarimetry in multiply scattering birefringent optically active media

物体发射和反射的光为我们提供了许多有关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状态，或者说是垂直于传播方向的电场矢量的方向。当光穿过物体时，物体的偏振态就会发生变化。因此，可以通过偏振态的变化来获得物体的性质。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。该研究的长期目标是对生物组织进行偏振光评估。光在这类材料中所经历的无数偏转将扰乱它的偏振，以至于可能没有任何有用的信息可以提取。然而，我们和其他人已经表明，在多次散射中可以保留大量有用的偏振信息。提出的方法将量化在许多不同波长的混浊介质的极化损失。这些方法可以用来表征混浊系统，如行星大气、生物组织或非晶半导体。还提出了研究“手性”的混浊介质的影响。手性指的是某些材料的不对称性，这使得它们以独特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，以探测其分子结构和组成的细节。提出的工作是新颖的，其意图量化手性效应在光学厚浑浊介质通过偏振分析的多次散射光。我们将以目前在偏振测量方面的专业知识为基础，扩大我们的研究工作，纳入多波长效应。然后我们将评估糖尿病患者极化无创血糖监测的可行性（因为葡萄糖是一种手性分子）。这是临床医学中一个重要的突出挑战，我们提出的极化研究很好地准备为其成功解决作出贡献。

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.