Microphysical approach to polarized radiative transfer: extension to the case of an external observation point

The self-consistent microphysical approach applied recently to the transfer of polarized radiation inside a volume of anisotropic discrete random medium is extended to the case of an external observation point. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the solution of the vector radiative transfer equation yields all quantities necessary to calculate the response of an external collimated detector of polarized radiation as a function of the detector orientation and position relative to the scattering volume.