A polarization independent (PI) interferometer design that can be built from standard optical components is described. Based upon a
Michelson interferometer, the PI interferometer uses a 50 / 50 splitter and
Faraday Rotator Mirrors (FM's). The interferometer achieves good optical characteristics, such as high
extinction ratio (ER) and low
insertion loss (IL). Lack of polarization sensitivity reduces interferometer construction tolerances and cost, enhances performance and utility, and expands the scope of interferometric based devices. Such characteristics can be used to construct flexible, high performance, polarization insensitive, multi-rate, self-calibrating, optical DPSK receivers, power combiners, optical filters and interleavers, all-optical switches, and cascaded interferometers. Since polarization is not maintained in standard
fiber optic networks, a PI-DPSK
receiver allows for use of more sensitive DPSK communications over
fiber, without need for costly polarization control hardware. Other applications of PI interferometers include
optical CDMA, secure communications,
optical coherence tomography (OCT), and temporal gratings with ultra-precise timing.