5. Polarization attractor using a non-isotropic fiber

The isotropic fiber optic polarization stabilization device described above has many practical limitations, not least the need to use isotropic fiber with very high light powers (several tens of Watts), which severely limits its integration into most fiber optic systems, such as telecom transmission lines. To overcome this technological hurdle, one alternative is to abandon the constraint of perfect isotropy and "make do" with piecewise isotropy. This can be achieved by considering a long optical fiber (several kilometers long) with low polarization mode dispersion (PMD).

It should be remembered that PMD, expressed in ps/km ^1/2 , is essentially due to imperfections in the fiber during manufacture, and in particular to its random residual birefringence (which is the case with most standard optical fibers)