Fiber-optic interferometric polarization analyzer: new approach to polarization analysis

This paper presents a new approach to description of the partial polarization in a fiber-optic system. The introduced model is treating depolarization as a distribution of different states of polarization (SOP). The parameters of such SOP distribution function are connected with the spectral character of a light source, which may give a depolarization process different from a linear one in an optical fiber system. Such description of light propagation in an optical fiber can be useful for investigation of the polarization mode dispersion. This paper also presents results of the degree of polarization measurement by application of the introduced approach in the fiber-optic interferometric polarization analyzer. This is the fiber-optic Sagnac interferometer which uses a measurement technique based on the fourth Fresnel-Arago´s condition of polarized beam interference.