Light propagation through a coiled optical fiber and Pancharatnam phase

TL;DR

This paper clarifies how polarization changes in a coiled optical fiber induce a Pancharatnam phase shift in interferometry, depending on polarization states and fiber geometry, with implications for understanding optical activity effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates that polarization-changing elements in a coiled fiber cause a measurable Pancharatnam phase shift, clarifying the phase behavior for non-circular polarization states.

Findings

Nonzero Pancharatnam phase depends on incident polarization and fiber geometry.

Phase shift behavior becomes singular near orthogonal polarization states.

Intensity modulation amplitude is polarization-independent at zero path difference.

Abstract

The nature of changes in the interference pattern caused by the presence of polarization-changing elements in one or both beams of an interferometer, in particular those caused by an effective optical activity due to passage of a polarized beam through a coiled optical fiber are clarified. It is pointed out that for an incident state that is not circularly polarized so that the two interfering beams go to different polarization states, there is an observable nonzero Pancharatnam phase shift between them which depends on the incident polarization state and on the solid angle subtended by the track of the $\vec{k}$-vector at the centre of the sphere of k-vectors. The behaviour of this phase shift is singular when the two interfering states are nearly orthogonal. It is shown that for zero path difference between the two beams, the amplitude of intensity modulation as a function of optical activity is independent of the incident polarization state.