Broadband characterization of polarization mode dispersion for quantum communication channels
Abstract
We present a method for characterizing depolarization in fiber channels carrying broadband polarization-encoded optical signals. Wavelength-dependent polarization mode dispersion maps each input polarization to a trajectory on the Poincaré sphere; we show that the singular value decomposition of the band-averaged rotation matrix yields, in closed form, the optimal input states, the associated mutually unbiased measurement bases, and the resulting projection error probabilities. The three singular values provide a compact, bandwidth-dependent channel signature that distinguishes first- from higher-order dispersion, and yield the bandwidth at which the worst-case error probability reaches 3% as a practical filtering budget. We perform a second-order analysis of the band average that treats the two higher-order mechanisms: variation of the differential group delay at a fixed principal-state axis and wander of that axis with wavelength. We characterize 12 deployed fiber links in Masdar City and demonstrate mitigation by concatenating two channels through a single polarization controller, a step towards nonlocal compensation. The analysis is implemented in an openly available Python library for fiber-channel characterization.
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BibTeX
@misc{rodimin2026broadband,
title = {{Broadband characterization of polarization mode dispersion for quantum communication channels}},
author = {Vadim Rodimin and Konstantin Kravtsov and Rui Ming Chua and Xingjian Zhang and Aleksei Ponasenko and Yury Kurochkin and Alexander Ling and James A. Grieve},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.03202},
eprint = {2607.03202},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03202},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Broadband characterization of polarization mode dispersion for quantum communication channels
AU - Vadim Rodimin
AU - Konstantin Kravtsov
AU - Rui Ming Chua
AU - Xingjian Zhang
AU - Aleksei Ponasenko
AU - Yury Kurochkin
AU - Alexander Ling
AU - James A. Grieve
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.03202
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03202
AB - We present a method for characterizing depolarization in fiber channels carrying broadband polarization-encoded optical signals. Wavelength-dependent polarization mode dispersion maps each input polarization to a trajectory on the Poincaré sphere; we show that the singular value decomposition of the band-averaged rotation matrix yields, in closed form, the optimal input states, the associated mutually unbiased measurement bases, and the resulting projection error probabilities. The three singular values provide a compact, bandwidth-dependent channel signature that distinguishes first- from higher-order dispersion, and yield the bandwidth at which the worst-case error probability reaches 3% as a practical filtering budget. We perform a second-order analysis of the band average that treats the two higher-order mechanisms: variation of the differential group delay at a fixed principal-state axis and wander of that axis with wavelength. We characterize 12 deployed fiber links in Masdar City and demonstrate mitigation by concatenating two channels through a single polarization controller, a step towards nonlocal compensation. The analysis is implemented in an openly available Python library for fiber-channel characterization.
ER -