Title: Stokes parameters
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - Stokes parameters
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.S06030
Status: current

Definition
Of elliptically polarized incident radiation, these are given by \[s_{0}^{0}=E_{1}^{0}+E_{2}^{0}\] \[s_{1}^{0}=E_{1}^{0}- E_{2}^{0}\] \[s_{2}^{0}=2\ \sqrt{E_{1}^{0}\ E_{2}^{0}}\ \cos   \delta ^{0}\] \[s_{3}^{0}=2\ \sqrt{E_{1}^{0}\ E_{2}^{0}}\ \sin   \delta ^{0}\] where \(E_{1}^{0}\) and \(E_{2}^{0}\) specify the irradiances of the incident light polarized with their electric vectors vibrating perpendicular and parallel to the scattering, respectively and \(\delta ^{0}\) is the phase difference between these electric vectors.

Related Terms
- irradiances: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/I03254
- radiation: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/R05048
- scattering: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/S05493
- scattering matrix: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/S05492

Source
- PAC, 1983, 55, 931. 'Definitions, terminology and symbols in colloid and surface chemistry. Part 1.14: Light scattering (Provisional)' on page 933 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac198355060931)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/S06030/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/S06030/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/S06030/xml

Citation: Citation: 'Stokes parameters' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.S06030
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Accessed: 2026-06-14T10:33:21+00:00