Agilent Technologies 86038A User Manual page 298

Glossary Dispersion Terminology
PMD Delay
In the long fiber regime, the mean DGD over a wide range of wavelength or
temperature.
Polarization Maintaining Fiber (PMF)
A specially constructed fiber exhibiting a birefringence value several
thousand times stronger than transmission fiber. It is used to guide linearly
polarized light from point-to-point, usually between components or
instruments. It exhibits high-PMD, usually more than 1 ps of DGD per
meter.
Poincare Sphere
A spherical representation of polarization state in which each possible
state maps into a point on the sphere.
Polarimeter
An instrument that measures the polarization properties of light.
Polarization Adjuster
See "Polarization Controller'.
Polarization Controller
A device that allows you to transform an input state to a desired output
state.
Polarization Mode Coupling
In optical fiber, the phenomenon in which energy exchanges between local
fast and slow polarization modes. It can be caused by a fiber interface or by
a local disturbance of the intrinsic (native) birefringence of the fiber.
Principal State of Polarization (PSP)
In the context of optical fiber in the randomly mode coupled regime, the
input PSP's are the two orthogonal states that identify the fast and slow
modes of the overall fiber link. They are associated with another pair of
PSP's defined at the output. By definition, the PSP's are the states at
which the polarization transformation of the link is independent of
wavelength (over a suitably narrow increment of wavelength). See
also"PSP Bandwidth" .
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Agilent 86038A Optical Dispersion Analyzer, Third Edition