Dependence of the circular polarization of backscattered light in random media on anisotropy of scatterers

The scattering of linearly or circularly polarized light from a semi-infinite randomly inhomogeneous medium is considered. Using the Monte Carlo method, it is shown that, in the case of a wide front of incident and scattered optical radiation and irrespective of the degree of scattering anisotropy, the copolarized component of backscattered light dominates the cross-polarized component for the linear polarization and the cross-polarized component dominates the copolarized component for the circular polarization. If the beams of incident and scattered radiation are spatially separated and the size of scatterers exceeds the wavelength, the circular copolarized component dominates the cross-polarized one. A similar effect of the change in direction of the rotation of the plane of polarization in relation to the size of scatterers is revealed for pulsed radiation.