Optical Telecom Networks as Weak Quantum Measurements with Postselection

We show that weak measurements with post-selection, proposed in the context of the quantum theory of measurement, naturally appear in the everyday physics of fiber optics telecom networks through polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization-dependent losses (PDL). Specifically, the PMD leads to a time-resolved discrimination of polarization; the post-selection is done in the most natural way: one post-selects those photons that have not been lost because of the PDL. The quantum formalism is shown to simplify the calculation of optical networks in the telecom limit of weak PMD.