M. Lietzow, S. Wolf
Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics,Kiel University
Clouds are an essential part of (exo)planetary atmospheres. They scatter the incomingstellar radiation and thus affect the reflected polarized flux. Therefore, observing thereflected polarized flux at different planetary phase angles and wavelengths potentiallyallows characterizing these clouds.We investigate the polarization state of the scattered flux of exoplanetary atmosphereswith various cloud compositions. In particular, we calculate the optical properties of dif-ferent cloud condensates, which are predicted by cloud formation models, and apply the3D Monte Carlo code POLARIS to solve the radiative transfer in the exoplanetary at-mosphere (Reissl et al. 2016; Lietzow et al. 2021). We find that the scattered polarizedradiation is a very characteristic function of size and complex refractive index of thecloud condensates, wavelength, and planetary phase angle. Given the accuracy of exist-ing high-precision polarimeters, scattered light polarimetry indeed has the potential tobecome a powerful tool to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres.