Effective dichroism in forward scattering by inhomogeneous birefringent medium

The Mueller matrix model for inhomogeneous medium characterized by simultaneous linear and circular birefringence for single scattering in the forward direction is derived. We find that the presence of inhomogeneity results in the occurrence of new polarization effects. In particular, forward scattering by inhomogeneous birefringent medium exhibits linear and circular dichroism. We show that in the case of weak depolarization (when Cloude's entropy is less than 0.5), the initial parameters for linear and circular birefringence can be obtained from deterministic Mueller matrix associated with the largest eigenvalue of Cloude's coherency matrix. Sample calculations are given for quartz.