POLARIZER-INDUCED AND ANALYZER-INDUCED NOISE IN FIBEROPTIC POLARIZATION-SENSITIVE INTERMODAL INTERFEROMETERS

A theoretical and experimental study on the influence of imperfect pol arizer/analyzer and their nonideal orientation along fiber axes on the generation of noise in bimodal polarization-sensitive interference is presented in this paper, It is shown that the polarimetric responses of each mode, the intermodal response of the orthogonal polarization a s well as the crossed terms are superimposed upon the intermodal respo nse considered to be the useful signal. The theoretical analysis is ba sed on the use of spatial interferometric Stokes parameters and the Mu ller matrix method, Exact analytical expressions for the noise contrib utions are derived, Experimental data confirms the basic theoretical r esults and shows that the greatest noise contribution for a polarizati on-sensitive intermodal interferometer comes from the polarimetric and the crossed term.