Temperature-insensitive strain measurement using a birefringent interferometer based on a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber

We propose a novel and simple scheme for a temperature-insensitive strain measurement by using a birefringent interferometer configured by a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF). The wavelength-dependent periodic transmission in a birefringent interferometer can be achieved by using a PM-PCF between two linear polarizers. Since the PM-PCF is composed of a single material, such as silica, the peak wavelength shift with temperature variation can be negligible because of the small amount of the birefringence change of the PM-PCF with temperature change. The measured temperature sensitivity is −0.3 pm/°C. However, the peak wavelength can be changed by strain because the peak wavelength shift is directly proportion to strain change. The strain sensitivity is measured to be 1.3 pm/με in a strain range from 0 to 1600 με. The measurement resolution of the strain is estimated to be 2.1 με. The proposed scheme has advantages of simple structure and low loss without a Sagnac loop, temperature insensitivity, ease installation, and short length of a sensing probe compared with a conventional PMF-based Sagnac loop interferometer.     

Femtosecond laser microfabricated fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer for sensing applications

We demonstrate a femtosecond laser microfabricated fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer and reveal the dependences of the sensitivities of different environmental parameters on the specifications of the interferometer. A 30-mm-long fiber interferometer at a wavelength of 1593 nm exhibits a temperature sensitivity of 0.103 nm/°C, axial strain sensitivity of -1.35 pm/με, and refractive index sensitivity of -15.294 nm/RIU, respectively. In addition to dependence on interferometer length, the sensitivities are also strongly dependent on the operation wavelength of the selected interference order. When the operation wavelength is selected at 1525 nm, the sensitivities are 0.085 nm/°C, -0.09 pm/με, and -13.824 nm/RIU, respectively.     

Temperature-insensitive Mach-Zehnder interferometric strain sensor based on concatenating two waist-enlarged fiber tapers

A novel temperature-insensitive strain sensor,based on an in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer,is fabricated by concatenating two waist-enlarged fiber tapers separated by a short piece of photonic crystal fiber. The interference spectrum of the proposed sensor is analyzed in detail.Experimental results demonstrate that this sensor has a strain sensitivity of.3.02 pm/μεand maintains the temperature insensitivity feature. The proposed sensor has great potential in diverse sensing applications due to its advantages,such as its compact size,low cost,and simple fabrication process.     

Optical fiber strain and temperature sensor based on an in-line Mach–Zehnder interferometer using thin-core fiber

We propose and demonstrate a fiber in-line Mach–Zehnder interferometer using thin-core fibers. This in-line interferometer is composed of a short section of thin-core fiber inserted between two single mode fibers (SMF), and demonstrated as a strain and temperature sensor in this study. A strain sensitivity of ?1.83 pm/με with a measurement range of 0?2000 με, and the temperature sensitivity of ?72.89 pm/°C with a temperature variation of 50 °C are achieved. We also discussed that the influence of strain and temperature change on the relative power ratios among the excited cladding modes in thin-core fibers.     

Simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature based on a fiber Bragg grating combined with a high-birefringence fiber loop mirror

We present an all-fiber sensor for simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain. The sensing head is formed by introducing a fiber Bragg grating into a high-birefringence fiber loop mirror that acts as a Mach-Zehnder interferometer for temperature and strain discrimination. A sensing resolution of ±1 °C in temperature and ±21 με in strain has been experimentally achieved over a temperature range of 60 °C and strain range of 600 με.     

Simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain using a long-period fiber grating with a micro-taper

An all-fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) consisting of a long-period fiber grating with a micro-taper is proposed for simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain. The experimental results demonstrate that the temperature and strain sensitivities of the proposed MZI are 83 pm/°C and ?2.6 pm/με, respectively. The strain sensitivity is 20 times as high as that of a long-period fiber written by CO₂ laser pulses combined with a fiber bitaper. In addition, the interferometer requires only a common single-mode fiber, and it is easy to fabricate and is inexpensive for temperature and strain sensing applications.     

Integration of miniature Fabry-Perot fiber optic sensor with FBG for the measurement of temperature and strain

A sensor has been fabricated by the integration of a fiber Bragg gating sensor (FBGs) with a fiber Fabry-Perot (F-P) sensor fabricated by etching method. In the integrated sensor, the FBG was used to measure temperature, while the fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer sensor (FFPIs) was used for strain measurement. Wavelength decoding for FBG and peak tracking for FFPI was employed for demodulation, respectively. The result showed that the temperature and strain sensitivity for the integrated sensor is ~ 2.7 pm/μεand ~ 9.3 pm/°C, respectively.     

Simultaneous measurement of curvature and temperature based on PCF-based interferometer and fiber Bragg grating

A sensor head consisting of a photonic crystal fiber (PCF)-based Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for simultaneous measurement of curvature and temperature. The MZI fabricated by splicing a short length of PCF between two single-mode fibers with the air-hole structure that completely collapsed near the splicing points, is sensitive to fiber bending and surrounding temperature, while the FBG is only sensitive to the later. Simultaneous measurement of curvature and temperature is therefore obtained. Sensitivities of 4.06 nm/m^− 1 and 6.30 pm/°C are achieved experimentally for curvature and temperature, respectively. And the corresponding resolutions are 5.2 × 10^− 4 m^− 1 and 1.25 °C for curvature and temperature, respectively, based on the wavelength measurement resolution of 10 pm.     

Hybrid configuration of Sagnac and modal interferometer with high extinction ratio

A hybrid configuration of Sagnac and modal interferometer is proposed to obtain high extinction ratio (ER). Firstly, a modal interferometer based on core-offset splicing of three sections of single mode fiber is obtained through manually controlling the fusion parameters. Then the modal interferometer is inscribed into a Sagnac loop, which can obtain a higher ER by carefully adjusting the polarization controller (PC). There is about 10 dB extinction ratio higher than the modal interferometer. The higher the extinction ratio is, the sharper the bottom of waveform will be, so the wavelength shifts can be measured more accurately when sensing temperature, pressure or other parameters. The measured sensitivity of temperature is 48.67 pm/°C in the band of 1550 nm. It also can be applied in strain measurement, vibration measurement and so on.     

All-solid multi-core fiber-based multipath Mach–Zehnder interferometer for temperature sensing

A novel multipath Mach–Zehnder interferometer (m-MZI) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, which is fabricated by fusion splicing a segment of all-solid multi-core fiber (MCF) between two sections of single mode fiber-28 with a well-controlled lateral offset at the splice points. Beam propagation method-based simulation results demonstrated light passing throw MCF from multiple paths. Experiments with different lengths of MCF were implemented to investigate our proposed m-MZI’s response to temperature and strain. Compared with previously reported optical fiber modal interferometers, higher phase sensitivity can be obtained in our scheme due to the multipath interference configuration embedded in one fiber. A very high temperature sensitivity of 130.6 pm/°C has been achieved, and the maximum strain sensitivity is less than 0.284 pm/με in all experiments. A record low strain-to-temperature cross-sensitivity of 6.2 × 10^?4 °C/με has been realized, and it shows great significance of this in-fiber integrated multipath Mach–Zehnder interferometer in practical temperature sensing applications.     

Fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer based on microcavities for high-temperature sensing with high sensitivity

A high-temperature sensor based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) in a conventional single-mode optical fiber is proposed and fabricated by concatenating two microcavities separated by a middle section. A femtosecond laser is used to fabricate a microhole on the center of a fiber end. Then a micro-air-cavity is formed by splicing the microholed fiber end with a normal fiber end. The interferometer is applied for high-temperature sensing, in the range of 500-1200?°C, with a sensitivity of 109 pm/°C that, to the best of our knowledge, is highest in silica fiber temperature sensors. Also, the interferometer is insensitive to external refractive index (RI), which is desirable for temperature sensors.     

Single S-tapered fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometers

A fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) sensor, novel to our knowledge, based on a single "S"-like fiber taper has been fabricated via applying nonaxial pull in fiber tapering by a fusion splicer. The typical feature size of the structure has a length of 660 μm and the axial offset of 96 μm. This S fiber taper MZI has a refractive index (RI) sensitivity of 1590 nm/refractive index unit in the RI range of 1.409-1.425 and a strain sensitivity of about -60 pm/microstrain, which is 30 times higher than that of the normal two-taper-based MZI sensors.     

一个新型的基于全光纤Mach-Zehnder干涉仪BOTDR系统

报道了新型的分布式传感测量布里渊光时域反射(BOTDR)系统.布里渊散射频移和强度均依赖于温度和应变,因此,BOTDR利用光纤中的自发布里渊散射作为测量信号可以实现分布式温度和应变测量.在BOTDR中,光源采用窄谱半导体激光器,并由声光调制器调制成脉冲光,经掺铒光纤放大器放大后,注入测试光纤以产生自发布里渊散射.利用双通Mach-Zehnder干涉仪分离光纤背向散射中的自发布里渊散射与瑞利散射信号,实现了自发布里渊散射的直接检测.实验结果表明基于全光纤Mach-Zehnder干涉仪BOTDR方案是可行的.     

基于马赫-曾德干涉的全光纤双参量传感器

提出一种基于S形-错位结构的全光纤马赫-曾德干涉仪（MZI）双参量传感器。该传感结构是采用单模光纤在光纤熔接机中通过简单的放电和熔接等步骤制备而成。顺时针扭转时, 传感器的传输光谱向短波长方向偏移; 逆时针扭转, 向长波长方向偏移。对传感器的实验研究结果表明,该传感器在光纤横截面上顺时针和逆时针两个旋转方向上的扭曲传感灵敏度分别为?223 pm/(rad·cm?1), 140 pm/(rad·cm?1),且可实现扭转方向的判别,在一定应变范围内的应变灵敏度为0.145×106 dB/ε(这里ε为应变),且温度交叉灵敏度极小,可忽略不计。因此,这种基于单模光纤的纤芯-包层MZI双参量传感器具有传感灵敏度高,体积小巧,工艺简单,成本低廉且可判别扭转方向的优点,有望成为众多双参量测量操作中良好的候选仪器之一。     

Noise spectrum of the 140-GHz gyrotron designed for controlled thermonuclear fusion installations

A method for measurement of gyrotron amplitude noise using the Mach-Zehnder interferometer as a rejection filter, the measurement facility, and results of testing a 140-GHz industrial high-power gyrotron are discussed. The method improved the sensitivity by two orders of magnitude over that of the direct detection method. The experimental relative power spectral density in a frequency range of 50–250 MHz from the line center is 7 × 10⁻²⁰–5 × 10⁻¹⁹ 1/Hz.     

低阈值极化电压玻璃光波导电光效应的研究

采用热极化技术对掺锗玻璃条形光波导进行极化,通过光纤连接 (单模) 的Mach Zehnder Interferometer 系统测量条形波导内诱导出的电光效应,系统地研究了大气环境下极化条件(极化温度、极化时间、极化电压)对电光效应的影响.结果表明:在最佳极化条件下(406℃、-2.4 kV、20 min),波导内的电光系数为r_TM=0.059±0.001 pm/V, r_TE=0.053±0.001 pm/V,且波导结构中存在一个较低的阈值极化电压(100 V)和阈值极化温度(80℃),此时在波导样品内仍能被激发出可观察的电光效应;实验还发现采用负极化诱导方式产生的电光系数较正极化提高15%左右.     

Measurement of photo-induced birefringence in germanosilicate fibers

In this paper, we report a novel method for accurately measuring the photo-induced birefringence of germanosilicate fibers by using an all fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The results indicate that the photo-induced normalized birefringence of C₅98-302(s) germanosilicate fiber can attain 10⁻⁵ and is multi-decaying-exponentially proportional to the UV exposure.      

Simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature with a long-period fiber grating inscribed Sagnac interferometer

A Sagnac interferometer with a long-period fiber grating (LPG) inscribed in the polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature. Due to the different responses of the LPG and the Sagnac interferometer to strain and temperature, simultaneous measurement can be achieved by monitoring the wavelength shifts and the intensity changes of a resonance dip of the sensor setup. The experimental results show that the achieved sensitivities to strain and temperature are 6.4 × 10^− 3 dB/με and 0.65 nm/°C, respectively.     

Torsion sensing with a fiber ring laser incorporating a pair of rotary long-period fiber gratings

We experimentally demonstrate a fiber ring laser for high-resolution torsion measurement, where the laser cavity consists of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer formed with a pair of long-period fiber gratings written in a twisted single-mode fiber by a CO₂ laser. The emitting wavelength of the laser provides a measure of the rate of the torsion applied to the grating pair, while the direction of the wavelength shift indicates the sense of the applied torsion. The narrow linewidth and the large side-mode suppression ratio of the laser can provide a much more precise measurement of torsion, compared with passive fiber-optic torsion sensors. The torsion sensitivity achieved is 0.084 nm/(rad/m) in the torsion range ± 100 rad/m, which corresponds to a torsion resolution of 0.12 rad/m, assuming a wavelength resolution of 10 pm for a typical optical spectrum analyzer. The ultimate resolution of the sensor is limited by the linewidth of the laser and could be an order of magnitude higher.