POLARIMETRIC SCATTERING FROM HETEROGENEOUS PARTICULATE MEDIA

Electromagnetic (EM) scattering in a medium containing discrete scatte rers is a problem with broad interdisciplinary interest. The Mueller m atrix solution has been applied to the study of EM polarimetric scatte ring and the vector radiative transfer from a layer of random medium. In this article, we report the methods to polarimetric scattering from a layer of particulate media containing: randomly dense spherical par ticles, nonuniformly oriented spheroids, or random clusters of spheroi ds. The complex scattering amplitude functions and phase matrix are ex plicitly obtained. Numerical results of the Mueller matrix solution sh ow the properties of completely polarimetric scattering of those rando m media and its functional dependence on the relevant physical paramet ers. (C) 1995 American institute of Physics.