4 research outputs found
Degree of polarization and quantum-mechanical purity
The purity parameter is used in quantum mechanics to discriminate
pure states from mixed states. We employ this concept to define a
degree of polarization for general, three-dimensional, classical
random electric fields. Our approach leads to a result that is
identical with a recent definition obtained by a decomposition of
the polarization matrix in terms of the Gell-Mann matrices. We
also give an expression for this degree of polarization based on
the constituent two-dimensional subsystems