%0 Journal Article
%A Björk, G.
%A de Guise, H.
%A Klimov, Andrei B.
%A Hoz Iglesias, Pablo de la
%A Sánchez Soto, Luis Lorenzo
%T Classical distinguishability as an operational measure of polarization
%D 2014
%@ 1050-2947
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/33947
%X We put forward an operational degree of polarization that can be extended in a natural way to fields whose wave fronts are not necessarily planar. This measure appears as a distance from a state to the set of all of its polarization-transformed counterparts. By using the Hilbert-Schmidt metric, the resulting degree is a sum of two terms: one is the purity of the state and the other can be interpreted as a classical distinguishability, which can be experimentally determined in an interferometric setup. For transverse fields, this reduces to the standard approach, whereas it allows one to get a straight expression for nonparaxial fields.
%~