Abstract

The formulas determining the polarization ellipse from a given electric field’s components and vice versa are summarized. The objective of this paper is then to study the polarization evolution (plane-wave evolution) in a curvilinear optical fiber with both linear and circular birefringence. As a result, the Jones-matrix–coupled-mode description has been extended to cover a fiber with distributed principal axes and linear and circular birefringence, and the plane-wave components of the emerging output light are conveniently quantified in terms of the input light. The detailed procedure of this extension is discussed through the use of the field’s continuity, and the formulism is applied exclusively to various fibers such as twisted or spun and helical or spiral fibers of varying twist ratios, which may already have experienced external optical activity (side pressure, magnetic or electric fields, etc.). The conclusion drawn through this extended matrix technique is usually in good agreement with a range of the existing theoretical analyses (for evenly twisted fibers) and experimental results (for helical or spiral fibers, magnetic sensors, etc.), yet the approach proposed here obviously deals with a more general case and should therefore prove useful in practice.

© 1987 Optical Society of America

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