Analysis of errors induced by λ/4 wave plate in fiber-optic current sensor system

1/4λ wave plate is a key element in the fiber-optic current sensor system. When a retardation error or an orientation error of birefringence axes of 1/4λ wave plate with respect to the hi-bi fiber axes occurs in the 1/4λ wave plate, the sensor system will output a wrong result of the measured current. The contributions of these two errors to the final result of the whole system were studied and the errors functions were deduced by establishing the measurement function of the current sensor system with Jones matrixes of the optical elements. The results show that that the greater the orientation error or the retardation error, the larger the final error, and that these two errors cannot be compensated each other.