A simple angular alignment technique for a polarization-maintaining-fiber

Simple and accurate techniques for angular alignment of a polarization-maintaining-fiber (PMF) to a linearly polarized input beam are required for many optical-fiber applications. We consider an alignment technique wherein a short length of PMF undergoes a large temperature excursion and the output beam from the fiber is simply monitored by a linear polarizer and a power meter. Upon carefully considering the results for rotation angles near alignment, an accuracy better than 0.2/spl deg/ as well as a measurement of the fiber crosstalk are obtained.<>