title: Quasi-monochromatic fiber depolarizer and its application to polarization-dependent loss measurement.
abstract: We theoretically derive the relationship between the degrees of polarization (DOPs) of input and output for an optical component with polarization-dependent loss (PDL) and birefringence. Based on the theoretical result, we propose a novel depolarizer for quasi-monochromatic light that can depolarize a fully polarized light with a 50 MHz linewidth to less than 0.2% in the DOP The depolarized light is then used to measure PDL in a single-mode optical fiber link. To the best of our knowledge, our new PDL measurement method is significantly faster than all known methods. Experimental results show excellent agreement with other methods.
authors.affiliation: Network Technology Research Centre, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798. hdong@ntu.edu.sg
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: J Q
authors.initials: JQ
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shum
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Y D
authors.initials: YD
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: C Q
authors.initials: CQ
authors.lastname: Wu