Stokes Vector -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics

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Stokes Vector

The original Stokes parameters were defined by letting be the total intensity, the intensity of horizontal linear polarization, the intensity of linear polarization at a 45° angle, and the intensity of left-handed circularly polarized light, and then defining

These are often normalized by dividing by . They can also be re-expressed in terms of the electric field,
as
where the constant has been dropped (with is the permittivity of free space and c the speed of light) and

Jones Vector, Mueller Matrix, Polarization