Intensity noise-driven nonlinear fiber polarization scrambler

We propose and analyze a novel all-optical fiber optic polarization scrambler, based on the transfer via the Kerr effect of the intensity fluctuations of an incoherent pump beam into polarization fluctuations of a copropagating, frequency shifted signal beam in a randomly birefringent telecom fiber. Optimal signal polarization scrambling results whenever the input signal and pump beams have nearly orthogonal states of polarizations. The nonlinear polarization scrambler may operate on either cw or high-bit-rate pulsed signals.