Abstract
The influence of temperature on the efficiency of Lyot depolarizers is analysed. It is a commonly used idealization that if the birefringent sections forming the depolarizer are made long enough with respect to the coherence time of the lightwave then strictly complete depolarization is always assured. This can lead to a false conclusion that in a real-world system the residual degree of polarization (DoP) will reach a certain value, slightly higher than zero, and remain independent of the initial polarization state (SoP) and insensitive for small variations of material parameters. We point out that Lyot depolarizers are always inhomogeneous in general and, thus, a precise estimation of the maximum possible DoP of an emerging lighwave is not trivial. Using a system made of two sections of lithium niobate we examine and explain how environmental temperature variations within the range of 1 ° C can significantly affect the depolarization efficiency. The numerical predictions of the effect have been verified qualitatively in experiments.
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