Principal states of polarization for an optical pulse in the presence of polarization-dependent loss and polarization mode dispersion

Abstract

A generalized defmition ofprincipal states ofpolarization (PSPs) for an optical pulse is given from this work for a fiber with both polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization dependence loss (PDL). As a result, the two PSPs of a pulse are generally non-orthogonal. The effective PDL of the pulse strongly depends on input pulse width. For a multi-section fiber, the effective PDL can be smaller than the minimum differences ofthe individual fiber section's PDL. The narrowest output pulse width can be smaller than the input pulse width in the presence of PDL.