Modulation instabilities in randomly birefringent two-mode optical fibers**Project supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Provincial Universities (Grant No. 14KJB140009), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11447113), and the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST (Grant No. 2241131301064).

Abstract

Modulation instabilities in the randomly birefringent two-mode optical fibers (RB-TMFs) are analyzed in detail by accounting the effects of the differential mode group delay (DMGD) and group velocity dispersion (GVD) ratio between the two modes, both of which are absent in the randomly birefringent single-mode optical fibers (RB-SMFs). New MI characteristics are found in both normal and anomalous dispersion regimes. For the normal dispersion, without DMGD, no MI exists. With DMGD, a completely new MI band is generated as long as the total power is smaller than a critical total power value, named by Pcr, which increases significantly with the increment of DMGD, and reduces dramatically as GVD ratio and power ratio between the two modes increases. For the anomalous dispersion, there is one MI band without DMGD. In the presence of DMGD, the MI gain is reduced generally. On the other hand, there also exists a critical total power (Pcr), which increases (decreases) distinctly with the increment of DMGD (GVD ratio of the two modes) but varies complicatedly with the power ratio between the two modes. Two MI bands are present for total power smaller than Pcr, and the dominant band can be switched between the low and high frequency bands by adjusting the power ratio between the two modes. The MI analysis in this paper is verified by numerical simulation.