Performance of Lyot depolarizers with birefringent single-mode fibers

Fiber-optic Lyot depolarizers which are attractive for fiber-optic gyros have been studied theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that the amount of residual polarization at the depolarizer output is proportional to the square root of the polarization-maintaining parameterh, yielding a residual polarization of about 1 percent for a fiber-optic depolarizer withh = 1.1 · 10⁻⁴/m and a superluminescent diode.