Agilent Technologies 11896A, User'S And Service Manual

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Measurement Considerations
P addle angle repeatability
P addle angle repeatability is a measure of the paddles ability to accurately
return to a previous physical position. P addle angle repeatability cannot be
used to quantify the state of polarization (SOP) repeatability because a given
paddle rotation angle aects SOP dierently , depending on the input SOP .
Settling time
Settling time is dened as the worst-case time for the Agilent 11896A to
recall and stabilize at a new set of paddle positions . The settling time is
approximately proportional to the maximum rotation angle through which
any paddle must travel.
P addle rotation rates
The four paddles in the polarization controller each rotate so all states of
polarization are generated or scanned in a random fashion. There are eight
scan rates , where rate 1 scans most slowly and rate 8 scans most quickly .
Nominal quarter-wave plates
The polarization controller's paddles have a nominal quarter-wave of
birefringence between 1300 nm to 1550 nm. All polarization states can be
generated from any input polarization state over the operating wavelength
range because of the redundancy given by the four paddles .
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