FM-AM Conversion Induced by Polarization Mode Dispersion in Fiber Systems

The conversion of the frequency modulated pulse induced from frequency modulation (FM) to amplitude modulation (AM) by the polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is theoretically and experimentally investigated. When there is no polarizer at the output end of a fiber system, the amplitude modulation depth is stable by 8%. Random amplitude modulation is observed when a polarizer is placed at the output end of the fiber system. The observed minimum and maximum modulation depths in our experiment are 5% and 80%, respectively. Simulation results show that the amplitude modulation is stable by 4% induced mainly by group velocity dispersion (GVD) when there is no polarizer, and the amplitude modulation depth displays the random variation character induced by the GVD and PMD. Lastly, a new fiber system scheme is proposed and little amplitude modulation is observed at the top of the output pulse.