Self-referred microcavity-based fused-fiber fabry-perot refractometer

Abstract

In this paper, a fiber-optic Fabry-Perot microcavity sensor is presented based on splicing a catastrophic fused fiber (CFF) to a single-mode fiber (SMF) for the simultaneous measurement of the refractive index (RI) and temperature. CFF formed by the catastrophic fuse effect consists of a periodic void in the fiber core that creates a teardrop shape or elliptical air microcavity after splicing. By simulation, the elliptical microcavity sensor is selected to measure external RI changes by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis. The RI sensitivity was obtained to be −2.5 ± 0.0074/RIU with a resolution of about 4 × 10−5 RIU. Also, the experimental results showed that temperature is obtained independently from the FFT parameter without being affected by the RI. The sensor temperature was determined by tracking the wavelength shift of the interference spectrum. Consequently, the temperature sensitivity of 7 pm/°C in the range of 20 °C to 95 °C was achieved. Therefore, the RI and the temperature were simultaneously measured by analyzing the spatial frequency and wavelength shift. The proposed dual-microcavity FP sensor can compensate for any power fluctuation in the input light source.