87612 20200716101545.0 doi 10.1364/OL.44.005715 sideral 115823 ART-2019-115823 eng (orcid)0000-0003-1740-2244 Gil, José J. Universidad de Zaragoza Arbitrary decomposition of a Mueller matrix 2019 Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted Mueller polarimetry involves a variety of instruments and technologies whose importance and scope of applications are rapidly increasing. The exploitation of these powerful resources depends strongly on the mathematical models that underlie the analysis and interpretation of the measured Mueller matrices and, very particularly, on the theorems for their serial and parallel decompositions. In this Letter, the most general formulation for the parallel decomposition of a Mueller matrix is presented, which overcomes certain critical limitations of the previous approaches, particularly the unnecessary exigency that the Mueller matrices of all parallel components have to be normalized in order to have equal transmittances for unpolarized light. In addition, the obtained results lead to a generalization of the polarimetric subtraction procedure and allow for a formulation of the arbitrary decomposition that integrates, in a natural way, the passivity criterion. info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ 3.714 2019 OPTICS 18 / 97 = 0.186 2019 Q1 T1 1.788 2019 Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics 2019 Q1 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion San José, Ignacio 2002 385 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Física Aplicada Área Física Aplicada 44, 23 (2019), 5715-5718 Opt. lett. Optics Letters 0146-9592 1310574 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/87612/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 121198 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/87612/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:87612 articulos driver 2020-07-16-09:42:56 ARTICLE