Backscattering of linearly and circularly polarized light in randomly inhomogeneous media

The scattering of linearly or circularly polarized light from a semibounded randomly inhomogeneous medium is considered. A new technique for simulating the electromagnetic radiation transport using the Monte Carlo method is proposed, which makes it possible to avoid cumbersome calculation of Muller matrices. Expressions are obtained for the co- and cross-polarized components of backscattered light for incident light of arbitrary polarization. The coherent and incoherent backscattering components are calculated for arbitrary combinations of incident and scattered light polarizations. It is shown that the main contribution to coherent backscattering is from the co- and cross-polarized components for linearly and circularly polarized light, respectively. The backscattering from an optically active random medium is calculated.