Dear Research Community,
I'm currently working on a project that is related to the absorption coefficient of phantom and we are interested to know if there are any ways we can use Mueller Matrix so find the value of μa?
Any literature I can take a look?
If you speak of a (i.e. one) absorption coefficient your assumption is that your material is perfectly homogeneous and isotropic. So if you measure the transmittance, then the Mueller Matrix of this sample would be boring, since your sample would not change the polarization of the incoming light. If your material is heterogeneous then you would find that the absorption coefficient is not the same as for a homogenous material, even if the second material is nonabsorbing (even if scattering negligible which I assume for simplicity).
If your material is anisotropic and would alter the polarization state, you actually would find that your absorption coefficient could be highly depending on the direction of the light wave and its polarization.
Certainly, you can have both, heterogeneity and anisotropic materials, which might then be fully, partly or randomly oriented. Only in the latter case it might be useful to describe the system with an absorption coefficient, but only if the heterogeneities are very small compared to the wavelength of the light.
So in summary, if you have the simplest case, using the Mueller Matrix would be overkill, if your sample is more complicated the Mueller Matrix description makes sense, but very likely the use of the absorption coefficient not any more, it depends.
I would recommend the book from Azzam and Bashara, Ellipsometry and polarized light: https://books.google.de/books/about/Ellipsometry_and_polarized_light.html?id=1_4uAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y
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