Depolarization analysis and compensation in spun birefringent optical fibers with fiber half-wave plate

Abstract

The apparent depolarization occurs when the broadband optical radiation propagates along a spun highly birefringent (SHB) fiber, which will cause a decrease in polarization sensibility as well as the performance of the polarimetric sensor using the fiber. In this paper, a fiber half-wave plate made of the helically wound SHB fiber is used to compensate for the depolarization in the fiber. The half-wave plate is created by winding the SHB fiber around a cylinder and it is located at the midpoint of the whole SHB fiber. Therefore, the half-wave plate is an embedded fiber-based compensation element. The degree of polarization in the SHB fiber has been researched by simulation and experiment. The measured result suggests the excellent performance of our compensation method.