Stability analysis of polarization attraction in optical fibers

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stability of polarization attraction in optical fibers, showing that stable solutions occur when the output polarization is nearly orthogonal to the input, especially with equal signal and pump intensities.

Contribution

It provides an analytical stability analysis of polarization attraction, revealing conditions for stable polarization states in nonlinear optical fibers.

Findings

Stable stationary solutions occur when output polarization is nearly orthogonal to input

Polarization attraction is strongest with equal signal and pump intensities

Analytical solutions elucidate the stability conditions of polarization states

Abstract

The nonlinear cross-polarization interaction among two intense counterpropagating beams in a span of lossless randomly birefringent telecom optical fiber may lead to the attraction an initially polarization scrambled signal towards wave with a well-defined state of polarization at the fiber output. By exploiting exact analytical solutions of the nonlinear polarization coupling process we carry out a linear stability study which reveals that temporally stable stationary solutions are only obtained whenever the output signal polarization is nearly orthogonal to the input pump polarization. Moreover, we predict that polarization attraction is acting in full strength whenever equally intense signal and pump waves are used.