Wavelength and sensitivity tunable long period gratings fabricated in fluid-cladding microfibers

We report the fabrication of long period gratings in fluid-cladding microfibers by directly focusing a femtosecond laser beam on the microfibers surface to induce periodical modification a long one side of the microfibers.A long period grating is fabricated in a water-cladding microfiber with a diameter of~5μm,which demonstrates a resonant attenuation of 28.53 dB at wavelength of 1588.1 nm with 10 pitches.When water cladding is changed to be refractive index oil of n=1.33 and alcohol solution with concentration of 5%,the resonance wavelength shifts to 1575.1 nm with resonant attenuation of 24.91 dB and 1594.1 nm with resonant attenuation of 35.9 dB,respectively.The long period grating demonstrates different temperature sensitivities of-0.524 nm/℃,-0.767 nm/℃and-1.316 nm/℃for water,alcohol solution and refractive index oil cladding microfibers,respectively,which means the alterable liquid cladding allows the availability of tunable wavelength and sensitivity.The fluid-cladding protects the microfibers from external disturbance and contamination and allows more flexibility in controlling the transmission property and sensing characteristics of long period gratings,which can be used as fiber devices and sensors for chemical,biological,and environmental applications.

Novel Fiber Optic Current Transformer With New Phase Modulation Method

Based on the transverse electro-optic effect of lithium niobate crystal,combined with polarizers and Faraday rotator,this paper presents a collinear closed-loop fiber optic current transformer with spatial non-reciprocity modulation method,and the feasibility of the scheme is verified by both the theoretical and experimental evidences.The detection scheme avoids the limitation of the transition time of the sensing fiber coil on the phase modulation frequency,improves the sensitivity and stability of the system,and reduces the volume and cost of fiber optic current transformer.The sawtooth wave modulation scheme is adopted to realize phase bias modulation and feedback modulation through phase shift of sawtooth wave to achieve closed-loop detection effect,which enhances the signal to noise ratio and simplifies demodulation mode.The experimental results show that the current ratio errors measured at room temperature range from 1%to 120%of rated current meet the requirements of national standard GB/T 20840.8-2007 and reach the accuracy level of 0.2S.The temperature stability of the current transformer is also tested,and the ratio error measured at the rated current does not exceed±0.2%in the range of-30℃to 50℃.

A Novel High Sensitivity Refractive Index Sensor Based on Multi-Core Micro/Nano Fiber

A refractive index sensor based on a multi-core micro/nano fiber is proposed for low refractive index solutions. At first, the mode field distribution of the tapered multi-core fiber is analyzed with the finite element model (FEM). After that, the relationship between the refractive index sensitivity and the diameter of the multi-core micro/nano fiber is calculated. At last, four sensors with different sizes are explored, and when the taper length is 16.20 mm, the refractive index sensitivity of the sensor can reach 5815.50nm/RIU, which agrees with the theoretical analysis. The refractive index measurement error is less than 0.5 %o, which has a high practical application value. The longer the taper length is, the smaller the fiber diameter is. According to the theoretical analysis, when the fiber diameter is less than 4.864 gm, the structure sensor\ refractive index sensitivity is higher than 10000 nm/RIU. At the same time, when the sensor's taper length is 15.99 mm, its temperature sensitivity is -0.1084nm/°C. Compared with single-mode fiber, the sensor proposed here has the advantages of stability, compact structure, and high sensitivity, which has a potential in the field of seawater salinity measurement.