Systematic method for the analysis of optical fibre circuits

The authors have developed a systematic and simple method of analysis for deriving steady-state transfer characteristics between input and output optical wave vectors, or powers, of linear optical fibre circuits formed from a variety of linear optical components. The analysis method is based on the Jones matrix representation and a functional block diagram description of fibre circuits. Using this method, the analysis of the optical fibre circuits becomes a series of well defined systematic procedures. This method provides a convenient route to determining the transfer function of relatively complex fibre circuits and can be viewed as a further development of the well-known Jones calculus. It has been applied to analyse a number of optical fibre circuit structures, such as Sagnac fibre optic interferometers, fibre Fabry-Perot resonators, fibre optic ring resonators and a novel enhanced sensitivity optical fibre gyroscope