Numerical simulations on polarized photon scattering for classification of air pollutants

Atmospheric pollution has become a key factor restricting the development of social economy. Identification of major pollutants has important scientific significance. The polarization evolution during polarized light interacting with particulate matters can provide important information sensitive to properties of particles. We propose a method to recognize the specific component in air dust, for example, the sand. Based on our polarization simulation, we show theoretically that some Stokes parameters at specific scattering angle can classify water soluble particles, water droplet and sand etc. The preliminary research implies some potential of polarization detection applied in source apportionment for air pollution monitoring.