Determination of stress-induced intrinsic birefringence in a single-mode fiber by measurement of the two-dimensional stress profile

The two-dimensional (2-D) axial stress profile of a single-mode fiber is obtained with an optical tomographic measurement technique. All stress components of the fiber are calculated from a measured axial stress profile. We demonstrate that the differential group delay induced by intrinsic nonsymmetric stress as well as the induced linear birefringence between two orthogonal polarization modes can be determined with an analytic technique based on a vector perturbation method from a measured asymmetric 2-D stress distribution. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.