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International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics

Polarization Mode Noise in Ultra-low Drift Phase Reference Distribution System over a Fiber Network

Pengbo Shen, Nathan J. Gomes, P.A. Davies, Bill Shillue

Published Jan 1, 2005• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The impact of polarization mode noise on the temporal drift of a delivered analogue phase reference signal through an optical fiber network is studied. The relationship between the dispersion of the state of polarization, change of the state of polarization and the maximum temporal drift of the LO signal is established. The resulting temporal drift can be larger than the PMD value of the receiver under certain conditions. It is a significant contributor to the temporal drift in the ultra-low drift phase reference distribution system, especially when motion of the fiber has to be present in the system.

DOI
10.1109/mwp.2005.203598

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The impact of polarization mode noise on the temporal drift of a delivered analogue phase reference signal through an optical fiber network is studied. The relationship between the dispersion of the state of polarization, change of the state of polarization and the maximum temporal drift of the LO signal is established. The resulting temporal drift can be larger than the PMD value of the receiver under certain conditions. It is a significant contributor to the temporal drift in the ultra-low drift phase reference distribution system, especially when motion of the fiber has to be present in the system.
Polarization variations in optical fibers are complex and would severely affect the performances of polarization-sensitive signal distribution systems. Owing to advances in experimental techniques and theoretical tools, we observe the effect of polarization variations in the optical fibers and we demonstrate that polarization mode dispersion (PMD) dominates the free-running fiber noise. Ultrahigh correlation, over 99%, is found between the phase fluctuation induced by polarization variation and the temperature fluctuation impacted on the optical fibers. By means of a polarization scrambling technique, the polarization variations in the optical fiber are averaged and the phase perturbations are minimized. It provides a promising solution for suppressing the random disturbances of polarization in the fiber-based optical frequency transfer system and quantum key distribution (QKD) system.
The implementation of quantum communication protocols in long optical fibers is limited by several decoherence mechanisms. In this contribution we review this mechanisms and analysis their effect on the quantum states. Because of asymmetry in the real fibers, the two orthogonal polarization modes are propagated at different phase and group velocities. The difference in group velocities results in Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD). It is created by random fluctuations of the residual birefringence in optical fibers, such that the State of Polarization (SOP) of an optical signal will turn randomly over time, in an unpredictable way. In optical quantum communication, quantum state measurement is necessary. The bottleneck for communication between far apart nodes is the increasing of the error probability with the length of the channel connecting the nodes. For an optical fiber, the value of absorption and depolarization of a photon (i.e., the qubit) increases exponentially with the length of the fiber.
Practical implementations of Continuous Variable (CV) Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems can be performed over the existing optical fiber telecommunication infrastructure. However, optical fibers suffer from random variations in the state of polarization affecting the performance of the system. In this work, we study the impact of the polarization drift on the performance of a CV-QKD setup with a polarization diversity receiver, in which the polarization drift is pre-compensated on Alice’s side. We show that pre-compensating for the polarization drift can successfully realign Alice’s and Bob’s raw signal, without affecting the excess noise, up to a polarization drift variance of 10−10, compatible with most practical implementations.
Quantum sensing has performance advantages that far exceed classical sensing, where sensing with photons is one of the most useful branches, and fiberization is a significant development approach to achieve a broader range of applications. However, the birefringence effect in optical fibers can cause polarization drift, which severely reduces the sensitivity of measurement on weak signals and influences the development of quantum sensing. In order to solve this problem, we propose a scheme that builds four time-division-multiplexing channels in the system by switching the polarization states of different optical pulses, and achieves the effect of suppressing polarization drift by analyzing and integrating the effective information of the four polarization channels. Moreover, the sensitivity and linear dynamic range of the system can be adjusted by inserting a reference phase. We demonstrate the feasibility of the system via theoretical analysis, and the numerical simulation results show that the scheme can demodulate the signal well and improve the signal-to-noise ratio by 30 dB, even in the case of the signal of the direct demodulation method is drowned out by noise and completely distorted.
Fundamental limits of fiber link are set by non-reciprocal effects that violate the hypothesis of equality between forward and backward path. Non-reciprocal noise arises technically from the set-up asymmetry, and fundamentally by the Sagnac effect when the fiber link encloses a non-zero area. As a pre-requisite for observation of Sagnac effect in fiber links, we present a study on phase noise and frequency stability contributions affecting coherent optical frequency transfer in bi-directional fiber links. Both technical and fundamental limitations of Two-Way optical frequency transfer are discussed. Our model predicts and our experiments substantially verify that the dominant noise mechanism at low Fourier frequencies is the polarization asymmetry induced by the temperature and relative humidity variations impacted on fiber links. The flicker noise floor due to the non-reciprocal noise arising from polarization mode dispersion is evidenced for the first time. We perform a post-processing approach which enables us to remove this polarization noise, improve the long-term stability and remove a frequency bias. We evaluate the uncertainty contributions of all the effects discussed for our 50 km spooled fiber link, dominated by its non-reciprocal noise induced by polarization mode dispersion with uncertainty of 1.9( ± 0.8)( ± 1.2) × 10−20. After correction, the linear drift of the residual phase is as low as 27 yoctosecond/s, leading to an uncertainty of the frequency transfer of 2.6 ( ± 39) × 10−22, confirming its potential for searching for more fundamental effects such as Sagnac effect or transient frequency variation due to dark matter.
The polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in optical fibers poses a major challenge for maintaining the fidelity of quantum states for quantum communications. In this work, a comprehensive model linking the probability of quantum measurement errors (infidelity) to PMD is developed and validated by experimental measurements of differential group delay and quantum bit error rate (QBER). Our research proposes effective methods to mitigate PMD effects for broadband entangled photons and evaluates the impact of higher-order PMD effects. The model provides an experimentally verified framework for the optimization of commercial quantum key distribution systems in deployed fiber-optic lines.