Radiative transfer with polarization in a multi-layer medium subject to Fresnel boundary and interface conditions

In this work, the analytical discrete-ordinates (ADO) method is applied to radiative transfer with polarization in a multi-layer dielectric medium subject to Fresnel boundary/interface conditions and uniform external illumination by obliquely incident parallel rays. A general form of the phase matrix and arbitrary scattering order are allowed in each layer and a recently developed procedure based on a nascent delta function is used to model the polar-angle dependence of the incident beam. A generalization of Chandrasekhar's classical approach of a decomposition into unscattered and scattered problems and a subsequent Fourier decomposition of the scattered problem are developed. The resulting set of azimuthally independent problems is solved with the ADO method. Numerical results of benchmark quality are reported in tabular form for two test cases, one of which consists of a nine-layer system. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.