Stokes-Mueller formalism

A complete theory of circular polarization ROA, including all known scattering geometries and polarization modulation schemes, has been presented recently [108], and this theory, combined with linear polarization ROA, has been formulated in a unified way [26,109,110] using the Stokes-Mueller formalism. In addition, progress in the theoretical description and experimental measurement of ROA invariants has been reviewed recently [26]. 

In a real experiment circular polarization is obtained as a result of converting linearly polarized light by a retarder crossed at 45° to the polarization plane. Therefore, an optical train composed of polarizer (45°), retarder (0°) and optically active sample can be represented in tenns of the Stokes-Mueller formalism (Fig. 3.2-4) as follows ... 

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