Poincaré Sphere Visualization of n-Paddle Fiber Polarization Controller

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System
Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.
This Demonstration shows the output polarization state of a 2- or 3-paddle fiber polarization controller as a red arrow on a Poincaré sphere. The sphere represents the tilt angles ,
,
with respect to the horizontal of the paddles in the polarization controller. The input polarization state, shown as a blue arrow, is interpreted as a linearly polarized light along the horizontal direction. The 2-paddle polarization controller consists of two concatenated quarter-wave plates, while the 3-paddle polarization controller consists of a half-wave plate in between two quarter-wave plates.
Contributed by: Debanuj Chatterjee (June 13)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Details
The basic operation mechanism of a 3-paddle fiber polarization controller is shown at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O7TL2SUAlo
Snapshots
Permanent Citation