Effective pulse dynamics in optical fibers with polarization mode dispersion

This paper investigates pulse propagation in randomly birefringent optical fibers. We consider two polarization-mode dispersion models. Using a separation of scales technique we derive an effective stochastic partial differential equation for the envelope of the field. This equation is driven by three independent Brownian motions, and it depends on the polarization-mode dispersion model through a single effective parameter. This shows that pulse dynamics in randomly birefringent fibers does not depend on the microscopic model. Numerical simulations are in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.