Abstract
We present a numerical study of the polarization properties of the broadband supercontinuum (SC) generated in birefringent photonic crystal fibers (PCFs). The simulations are based on generalized coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with quantum noise taken into account. The simulations illustrate the complicated polarization behavior in the SC spectra and show that the pulse-to-pulse polarization state of SC spectra fluctuates because of vector modulation instability. We investigate the polarization stability and uniformity of SC spectra under several simulation conditions and discuss generation of the SC in birefringent PCFs for applications with various polarization requirements.