Mueller-Matrix-Based Differential Rotation Method for Precise Measurement of Fiber Birefringence Vector

The method of complete polar decomposition for arbitrary Mueller matrixes is introduced to analyze the birefringence vector induced in a fiber, and then based on the Mueller matrix (MM) method, three kinds of computation methods including the absolute, the relative, and the differential rotation methods are proposed and investigated in detail. A computer-controlled measure system is employed to measure the Mueller matrix and birefringence vector for a 2.5-km fiber system with length 5 mm under lateral press in complicated environment with much perturbation. Experimental results show that the differential rotation (DR) method is the optimal approach to achieve fiber birefringence vectors in a large dynamic range of lateral press on fibers in perturbed situations, which reaches the highest linearity of 0.9998 and average deviation below 2.5%. Further analyses demonstrate that the DR method is also available for accurate orientation of lateral press direction and the average deviation is about 1.1°.