Investigation of polarization dispersion in long lengths of single-mode fiber using multilongitudinal mode lasers

We have used multilongitudinal mode lasers to investigate the polarization properties of long lengths of single-mode fiber cable. We find that the individual longitudinal modes are >99-percent polarized after propagation through 54.6 km of cabled fiber; however, the different longitudinal modes have different states of polarization at the output. This difference is caused by polarization dispersion, and we estimate a propagation delay difference for the two principal states of polarization to be 0.42 ps in the 54.6 km of cabled fiber.