THE CONE OF THE MUELLER MATRICES

In the study of polarized light, there are two basic notions: the Stokes vectors and the matrices which preserve them, called Mueller matrices. The set of Stokes vectors forms a cone: the Future Light Cone. In this work we will see that the Mueller matrices also form a cone in the vector space of real matrices of size 4X4, called the Mueller Cone. We obtain some properties of the Mueller cone, which in turn will be translated into properties of the Stokes vectors. As an application we will give a computational program to calibrate polarimeters by means of the eigenvectors of Mueller matrices (ECM). We also include programs to see if a matrix is Mueller, to approximate a matrix by a Mueller matrix, to approximate it by an invertible Mueller matrix and by a Stokes-cone-primitive Mueller matrix.