Faraday compensator of reciprocal optical anisotropy utilizing a polarization ring interferometer

It is shown that a polarization ring interferometer containing a Faraday ce ll can be used to compensate the reciprocal anisotropy in round-trip optica l circuits. It is established theoretically and experimentally that, unlike the case of conventional Faraday mirrors, the quality of the restoration o f the polarization in a compensator based on a polarization ring interferom eter is practically independent of the Faraday rotation angle. A deviation of the Faraday rotation angle from 45 degrees leads only to an additional p ower loss. The novel compensators can be used in fiber-optic circuits with a wideband light source or with several sources having different wavelength s. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1063-7850(99)02605-1].