Design Of A Polarization-Insensitive Optical Fiber Probe Based On Effective Parameters

By inserting a polarization controller, a polarization-insensitive optical fiber probe is first proposed. In order to design a fiber probe acting as a free-space media, the five effective parameters of an optical fiber are extracted by an analytical technique based on the Mueller matrix and the Stokes parameters. The feasibility of the common-path interferometer with a polarization-insensitive optical fiber probe for remote measurements is demonstrated by absolutely extracting the linear birefringence and linear diattenuation properties of a quarter-wave plate and a polarizer, respectively. A polarization-insensitive fiber probe is crucial for optical fiber applications in a polarization-sensitive near-field scanning optical microscopy and the remote sensing.