Sensitivity enhanced temperature sensor with serial tapered two-mode fibers based on the Vernier effect.

Abstract

A sensitivity enhanced temperature sensor with cascaded tapered two-mode fibers (TTMFs) based on the Vernier effect is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. It is confirmed that series connection exhibits higher extinction ratio than parallel one both by theory and experiments, which provides guidance for related experiments. In experiments, two TTMFs have the same single-mode fiber-TTMF-single-mode fiber configuration, while the free spectral ranges (FSRs) are chosen with slightly difference by modifying the parameters in the tapering process. Experimental results show that the proposed temperature sensor possesses sensitivity of -3.348 nm/°C in temperature measurement range from 25 °C to 60°C, 11.3 times sensitivity enhancement in comparison with single TTMF. Benefiting from advantages of high temperature sensitivity, simplicity of manufacture and long distance sensing, this novel sensitivity enhanced temperature sensor can be applied to various particular fields, such as oil wells, coal mines and so on.