Complex degree of mutual polarization in randomly scattered fields

Random electromagnetic fields resulting from light-matter interaction have strong intensity fluctuations and are characterized by various statistical parameters. The local polarization of these fields can also vary randomly leading to different degrees of global depolarization. Here we demonstrate that the spatial variability of the vectorial properties contains information about the origins of randomly scattered fields. In particular, we show that the complex degree of mutual polarization provides the high-order polarization correlations necessary to identify the sources of different random fields. Scattered fields with similar global properties but different origins can be efficiently discriminated from one single realization of the light-matter interaction