A modal interferometer based on single mode fiber-hollow core fiber-single mode fiber structure filled with alcohol and magnetic fluid for simultaneously measuring magnetic field and temperature

Abstract

In many fields, such as aerospace and marine environmental monitoring, magnetic field measurement is an important link. In recent years, optical fiber magnetic field sensor has received much attention because of its advantages such as small size, electromagnetic immunity, resistance to erosion and capability of remote sensing. In that case, magnetic fluid as a kind of medium between photons and magnetic field is widely used in optical fiber magnetic field sensors. Moreover, in the process of magnetic field measurement, disturbance introduced by temperature fluctuation always happens and brings uncertainty to the sensor. Temperature is also an important parameter in production process and needs to be measured. Therefore, designing a high-sensitive optical fiber sensor for simultaneously measuring magnetic field and temperature is a valuable work. In this paper, we present a high-sensitive hollow core fiber (HCF) interferometer for simultaneously measuring magnetic field and temperature. A segment of HCF filled with alcohol is inserted into single mode fiber (SMF) with 50 m offset at two splicing joints to guide light into the wall of HCF. And then this SMF-HCF-SMF structure is packaged by a capillary tube with full magnetic fluid (MF) inside it. Since the modal field area is large enough, the silica wall can support a series of guiding modes among which modal interference occurs and the interference spectrum can be recorded by an optical spectrum analyzer. Besides thermo-optic effect and thermal expansion effect of silica itself, the RI variations caused by thermo-optic effect of alcohol and MF as well as the magneto-optic effect of MF can also cause the phase difference of the guiding modes to change, thereby rendering interference dips movable. Thus, the sensitivity of temperature or magnetic field is higher than those given in some other previous studies. In addition, it is calculated that the effective RI sensitivities of guiding modes for inside and outside liquid are different because of the peculiar non-circular symmetry structure of HCF. So there is a possibility to find two dips in interference spectrum, which are formed with different modes and have various sensitivities to the variations of temperature and magnetic field. Finally, a sensitivity matrix can be built to demodulate those two parameters simultaneously. Experimental results show that within 20-58℃, the temperature sensitivities are 112 pm/℃ and 468 pm/℃ for dip1 and dip 2 whose magnetic field sensitivities are 37 pm/Oe and 82 pm/Oe within 0-169 Oe, respectively. The proposed sensor possesses high sensitivity and good mechanical strength, and can effectively eliminate the cross disturbances between temperature and magnetic field.