Unitarity-conserving construction of the Jones matrix and its application to polarization-mode dispersion analysis

We propose a method to measure the Jones matrix of the transmission medium without violating the unitarity of the matrix. Our method consists of defining the normalized Jones matrix each time the unitarity is lost by experimental error. Numerical simulation is performed to show the feasibility of the proposed method. The method is applied to polarization-mode dispersion analysis. We derive an explicit expression that allows us to evaluate the polarization-mode dispersion vector directly from the elements of the Jones matrix. We also introduce a parameter ∑ to determine a suitable wavelength step size for the measurement of the differential group delay of the principal states of polarization.