Anomalous behavior of depolarization of light in a turbid medium

Depolarization of polarized light transmitting through a turbid medium is known to decrease with increasing value of anisotropy parameter g of the medium. We have observed that for turbid media comprised of scatterers having size parameter (X) and relative refractive index ratio (m  ) in the range [0.05⩽(m−1)X⩽2.50.05⩽(m−1)X⩽2.5], although for a given value of X, a decrease in the value of m leads to higher g  , depolarization also increases. This anomalous behavior arises because the depolarization characteristics of anisotropic scattering media (g⩾0.7g⩾0.7) comprised of low refractive index scatterers [(m−1)≪1,(m−1)X≪1][(m−1)≪1,(m−1)X≪1] are much similar to that for Rayleigh scatterers.