Performance of Lyot depolarizers with birefringent single-mode fibers

Abstract

Fiber-optic Lyot depolarizers which are attractive for fiber-optic gyros have been studied theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that the amount of residual polarization at the depolarizer output is proportional to the square root of the polarization-maintaining parameter h , yielding a residual polarization of about 1 percent for a fiber-optic depolarizer with h = 1.1 \cdot 10^{-4} /m and a superluminescent diode.