Communication with Dynamically Fluctuating States of Light Polarization

Abstract

The fast, irregular, fluctuations of the state of polarization of light output from an erbium doper fiber ring laser are used to communicate digital information. The experiments illustrate the application of a dynamical encoding and information recovery scheme that is robust to perturbations of the communication channel, a standard single mode fiber. A fiber-optic polarization analyzer was used to measure and visualize the polarization dynamics at nanosecond time scales on the Poincaré sphere.