Spectral polarization method for the determination of birefringence and polarization dispersion in strongly birefringent single-mode waveguides

It is shown that a spectral polarization method can be used to determine directly the spectral dependence of the polarization dispersion of radiation propagating along a single-mode fiber waveguide, and of the "group" birefringence proportional to this dispersion. The interpretation of the results is confirmed experimentally by a study of a model sample of a birefringent crystal and of a single-mode fiber waveguide using other methods. It is also shown that this method can be used to determine highly accurately the cutoff wavelength of a singlemode fiber waveguide.