Basis for a polarized superfluorescent fiber source with increased efficiency

We propose to produce a superfluorescent fiber source (SFS) with a linearly polarized output by inserting a discrete polarizer near the middle of a polarization-maintaining Er-doped fiber. We show that with a relatively low-loss polarizer (<0.5 dB) the output power of the polarized SFS is predicted to approach that of a standard, unpolarized SFS, i.e., the power of the desired polarization mode is nearly doubled. The efficiency of this source depends weakly on the polarizer location and extinction ratio, although it depends strongly on its insertion loss. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America