Scattering and depolarization of waves incident upon a slab of random medium with refractive index different from that of the surrounding media

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Abstract
The problem of how the difference of the refractive indices between the background medium and surrounding media affects the propagation of an electromagnetic wave is investigated in this paper. We present the general formulation for an arbitrarily polarized plane wave obliquely incident on a slab of random medium and compare the numerical multiple scattering solution of the integral‐differential vector radiative transfer equation for latex particles with that of the analytical first‐order scattering solution. The comparison shows good agreement between the two methods within the applicable range of the first‐order approximation. From the cases studied we see that when the optical distance τ > 10, the effects of the multiple‐boundary reflection on wave propagation can be neglected for the calculation of the transmitted intensity but usually must be taken into account for the calculation of the reflected intensity and the degree of polarization.