Scattering mechanism for quadratic evolution of depolarization.

It was recently demonstrated theoretically, when the polarimetric properties of a material depend only upon the direction transverse to that of propagation (long coherence length regime), depolarization in transmission evolves quadratically with material thickness. This behavior was observed in several experimental studies. However, some of these studies unlikely satisfy the long coherence length condition under which the theory applies. Here, we demonstrate that abandoning a unidirectional approach to the propagation of light through a medium, i.e., introducing scatter, causes quadratic depolarization to occur in the short coherence length regime.