Refractive Index Sensing With Mach–Zehnder Interferometer Based on Concatenating Two Single-Mode Fiber Tapers

Tian, Zhaobing; Yam, S.S.-H.; Barnes, Jack A.; Bock, Wojtek J.; Greig, P.; Fraser, James M.; Loock, Hans‐Peter; Oleschuk, Richard D.

doi:10.1109/lpt.2008.919507

Cited by 309 publications

(142 citation statements)

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“…Though LPGs have been revealed to possess a high sensitivity to the refractive index of the ambient medium, the typical full width at half maximum of the resonance peak of a LPG is about tens of nanometers, which limits the measurement accuracy and its multiplexing capability. Most recently, optical refractive index sensors or refractometers based on all-fiber interferometers 16,17 or resonators 18 have received considerable attention for their high sensitivity, absolute detection with wavelength codified information, broad measurement range, and compact size. These fiber interferometric techniques are cumbersome systems with high cost and simultaneous sensing of refractive index and temperature is missing.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, an in-line one-fiber approach to realize simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Compared with the techniques reported on the interferometers with tapered fibers for sensing applications, 17,19,20 a tapered fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer ͑FMZI͒ has been fabricated on single-mode fiber by using simple fusion splicing in this study. Analysis on the simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature has been carried out to verify the experimental results.…”

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Tapered fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer for simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature

Lu¹,

Men²,

Sooley³

et al. 2009

Applied Physics Letters

535

213

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An approach to achieve simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature is proposed by using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer realized on tapered single-mode optical fiber. The attenuation peak wavelength of the interference with specific order in the transmission spectrum shifts with changes in the environmental refractive index and temperature. By utilizing S-band and C / L-band light sources, simultaneous discrimination of refractive index and temperature with the tapered fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer is demonstrated with the corresponding sensitivities of Ϫ23.188 nm/RIU ͑refractive index unit͒ and 0.071 nm/°C, and Ϫ26.087 nm/RIU ͑blueshift͒ and 0.077 nm/°C ͑redshift͒ for the interference orders of 169 and 144, respectively. © 2009 American Institute of Physics. ͓DOI: 10.1063/1.3115029͔In situ monitoring of physical, chemical, and biological parameters is of great importance for process control in manufacturing industries, protection of ecosystems, and prevention of global warming. Refractive index ͑RI͒ and temperature are the most important parameters in these applications, especially in chemical or food industries for quality control and in biosensing for monitoring molecular bindings or biochemical reactions. Traditionally, the standard technique to measure refractive index is a refractometer, for which many well-known apparatus such as Pulfrich and Abbe refractometers have been used for many decades. 1 Surface plasmon resonance ͑SPR͒ has also been adopted for refractive index measurement through evanescent waves in waveguide configurations. 2 However, all these apparatuses are essentially bulky prism systems.In recent years, fiber-optic sensors have received significant attention for their unique advantages such as immunity to electromagnetic interference, compact size, potential low cost, and the possibility of distributed measurement over a long distance. 3 Earlier work on fiber-optic sensors for refractive index measurement reported metal-coated side-polished fibers, tapered fibers, or multimode fibers with relatively thin cladding layers to excite SPRs. 2,4 Besides the approach with evanescent waves from nanometer fiber tips coated with gold particles, 5 a majority of fiber sensors for refractive index measurement utilized fiber gratings, i.e., long-period gratings ͑LPGs͒ and fiber Bragg gratings ͑FBGs͒. Recent work that reported refractive index measurement with LPGs are either gold coated, 6 arc-induced phase shifted, 7 asymmetric, 8 or inscribed in air-and water-filled photonic crystal fibers. 9 Reported refractive index measurement with FBGs includes a metal-coated grating in a special single-mode fiber of larger core ͑26 m͒ and thinner cladding ͑30 m͒, 10 a tilted FBG with gold coating in single-mode fiber, 11 and cladding mode resonances of etched-eroded FBG. 12 A few papers reported simultaneous sensing of refractive index and temperature using LPGs, modified FBGs, and hybrid LPG-FBG structures, 13-15 with complicated design, instable system, or high cost, which restricts their pr...

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confidence: 99%

Tapered fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer for simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature

Lu¹,

Men²,

Sooley³

et al. 2009

Applied Physics Letters

535

213

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“…index sensors based on measurement of the spectral shifts of transmission peaks. [28][29][30][31][32][33] The phase difference between the sensing arm and the reference arm of the MZI can be expressed as…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A digitally generated ultrafine optical frequency comb for spectral measurements with 0.01-pm resolution and 0.7-µs response time

Bao

et al. 2015

Light Sci Appl

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Optical spectral measurements are crucial for optical sensors and many other applications, but the prevailing methods, such as optical spectrum analysis and tunable laser spectroscopy, often have to make compromises among resolution, speed, and accuracy. Optical frequency combs are widely used for metrology of discrete atomic and molecular spectral lines. However, they are usually generated by optical methods and have large comb spacing, which limits the resolution for direct sampling of continuous spectra. To overcome these problems, this paper presents an original method to digitally generate an ultrafine optical frequency comb (UFOFC) as the frequency ruler for spectral measurements. Each comb line provides one sampling point, and the full spectrum can be captured at the same time using coherent detection. For an experimental demonstration, we adopted the inverse fast Fourier transform to generate a UFOFC with a comb spacing of 1.46 MHz over a 10-GHz range and demonstrated its functions using a Mach-Zehnder refractive index sensor. The UFOFC obtains a spectral resolution of 0.01 pm and response time of 0.7 ms; both represent 100-fold improvements over the state of the art and could be further enhanced by several orders of magnitude. The UFOFC presented here could facilitate new label-free sensor applications that require both high resolution and fast speed, such as measuring binding kinetics and single-molecule dynamics.

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“…At the small core fiber region, the beam is guided as the core mode and as well as the cladding mode [7]. Figure 5(f) shows an effective in-line MZI which is formed by tapering a fiber at two points along the fiber [8,9]. The core mode diameter gets increased due to tapering and part of it can be easily coupled to the cladding mode(s).This method is relatively very simple and cost effective but mechanically weak especially at the tapering region.…”

Section: Mach Zehnder Interferometer As Sensorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machzehnder Interferometer and it’s Applications

Mehra¹,

Tripathi²

2010

IJCA

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This paper describes the design of Mach Zehnder Interferometer and reviews its applications in emerging optical communication networks. Mach Zehnder Interferometer is basically used to measure relative phase shift between two collimated beams from a coherent light source. Using this basic principle a number of devices can be designed, few of these such as optical sensors, all-optical switches, optical add-drop multiplexer and modulator are discussed in this paper.

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Refractive Index Sensing With Mach–Zehnder Interferometer Based on Concatenating Two Single-Mode Fiber Tapers

Cited by 309 publications

References 14 publications

Tapered fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer for simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature

Tapered fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer for simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature

A digitally generated ultrafine optical frequency comb for spectral measurements with 0.01-pm resolution and 0.7-µs response time

Machzehnder Interferometer and it’s Applications

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