Abstract

With the increasing availability of polarization preserving fibers it becomes feasible to construct all-fiber depolarizers. The polarization preserving fibers are used as birefringent elements in multi- section cascaded birefringent filters.^1–4 Such depolarizers are useful in improving the stability of fiber interferometric sensors by use of narrow (but nonzero) bandwidth light sources. An example is the use of superluminescent diodes as sources for fiber-optic gyros. In this case, the depolarizer improves gyro performance by reducing coherent fiber backscattering.

© 1983 Optical Society of America