A novel refractive-index (RI) Michelson interferometer based on a waist-enlarged taper is achieved. Such a device is fabricated by splicing a section of multimode fiber (MMF) at one end of single-mode fiber (SMF). Due to the fiber bitaper at the coupling point of SMF and MMF, the light is coupled into the MMF from lead in fiber core, and the intermodal interference will occur for the optical path difference between core mode and cladding mode. Then, the light will be reflected at the end of the fiber and recoupled back into the lead out fiber core by the fiber bitaper. When the lights return back to the lead out fiber, the intermodal interference will occur for the optical path difference between core mode and high order mode. The sensor has a linear response to RI with a sensitivity of −178.424 dB/RIU in the range of 1.351-1.4027 RIU. The temperature cross sensitivity is also analyzed, and the influence can be eliminated by simultaneous measurement of RI and temperature through the matrix equation. The proposed sensor features the advantages of easy fabrication, low cost, high mechanical strength, which make it a good candidate for bio-chemical measurement.Index Terms-Quasi-Michelson interferometer, fiber taper, multimode fiber, refractive index sensor.
A kind of optical fiber liquid refractive index sensor is proposed based on fiber core etched air-bubble and core diameter mismatched in-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer. A core etched standard single-mode fiber is spliced to another core etched standard single-mode fiber (SMF) to form an air bubble at the connecting point, and a 20 mm thinned fiber is cascaded (TCF) by fusion splicing method, which is 20 mm apart from the bubble, then a leading-mode fiber is spliced to the thinned fiber to form a structure of SMF-(air-bubble)-SMF-TCF-SMF in-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer liquid refractive index sensor. The air-bubble and the two fiber core diameter mismatched points serve as optical couplers for modes conversion. The transmission spectrum of sensor is studied by experiment. Results shows that the peak power changes with respect to surrounding refractive index with good linearity. The sensitivity of the sensor is 142.537 dB/RIU in the range of 1.3511.402 with linearity of 0.996, making it a good candidate for bio-chemical measurements.
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