Transverse mode characterization in optical fibers using singular value decomposition

What we believe to be a new scalar and data-driven approach to experimentally characterize the transverse modes of optical fibers is proposed in this paper. It retrieves the orthogonal modal base set of the fiber via singular value decomposition after collecting a large set of data under different coupling conditions. The results show good agreement with the simulated transverse modes. Due to its operating principle, this approach can characterize any fiber, regardless of its length or size, a prominent advantage compared to other experimental approaches.