Broadband characterization of polarization mode dispersion for quantum communication channels

Abstract:We present a method for characterizing depolarization in fiber channels carrying broadband polarization-encoded optical signals. Wavelength-dependent polarization mode dispersion (PMD) maps each input polarization to a trajectory on the Poincaré sphere; we show that the singular value decomposition of the band-averaged rotation matrix yields, in closed form, the optimal input states, the associated mutually unbiased measurement bases, and the resulting projection error probabilities. The three singular values provide a compact, bandwidth-dependent channel signature that distinguishes first- from higher-order PMD, and yield the bandwidth at which the worst-case error probability reaches 3% as a practical filtering budget. We characterize twelve deployed fiber links in Masdar City and demonstrate PMD mitigation by concatenating two channels through a single polarization controller, a step towards nonlocal PMD compensation.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Optics (physics.optics)

arXiv:2607.03202 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2607.03202v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.03202 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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