PROPAGATION OF PARTIALLY POLARIZED-LIGHT

We present a general formalism describing the evolution of partially p olarized light propagating in a medium with cubic nonlinearity. Within the ergodic approximation we found that totally polarized coherent si ngle-mode light remains totally polarized, irrespective of the type of optical medium. Partially polarized light consisting of a mixture of a coherent component with a random one preserves its degree of polariz ation in a dissipation-free medium with isotropic nonlinearity, while only linear or nonlinear dissipation may lead to alteration of the deg ree of polarization. We also found that in some crystal symmetry point groups, a time-nonreversible optical response may be the only reason for an alteration of the degree of polarization.