RESUMEN
The effect of a linear polarizer is conventionally well defined when viewed along the axis normal to its face. However, even for ideal linear polarizers, the non-normal viewing geometries attainable with wide-angle lenses require further considerations. A method to describe the polarization state of light passed through a linear polarizer and observed with an equidistant fisheye lens is described.
RESUMEN
We measured the linearly polarized light scattering of pure water and seawater at various salinities and estimated the depolarization ratio using five different methods of data analysis after removing the scattering due to contamination by residual nanoparticles. The depolarization ratio values (δ) estimated for pure water using these different methods are largely consistent with each other and result in a mean value of 0.039±0.001. For seawater, our results reveal a trend of a slight linear increase of δ with salinity (S), δ=0.039+a1×S, where a1 varies in the range of 1×10-4 to 2×10-4 between the methods.