Operation Of A Compensated Polarimetric Sensor With Semiconductor Light Source

The conventional polarimetric sensor, first devised by Rashleigh and Ulrich (1), is a simple transducer using polarisation maintaining fibre which, utilises changes in the differential optical delay between the two orthogonally-polarised modes of the fibre to sense physical parameters. The relative delay is conveniently observed by monitoring the state of polarisation of the light at the far end of the fibre (fig. 1(a)).