Response to “Comment on the transmission matrix for a dielectric interface”

In a work published a few months ago, we have reported a derivation of the transmission matrix that relates the incident and transmitted diffuse Stokes vectors at a plane interface between materials with different refractive indices. Recently, we became aware of a note sent to this journal by Zhai et al., in which they criticize our derivation. On further examination of our work, we found a mistake that affects two equations of our paper. Apparently that mistake was not perceived by Zhai et al. and may have contributed to a misunderstanding of our derivation by these authors. In addition, we concluded that the definitions of the parallel and perpendicular components of the intensity used in our work to express conservation of energy at a material interface must be changed to include a factor that depends on the medium properties. This is in accordance with an observation made by Zhai et al. in their note.

► A criticism of our work by Zhai et al. is discussed. ► Two mistakes in our work are identified and corrected. ► The transmission matrix derived by Zhai et al. is found to agree with our result.