A High Sensitivity Curvature Sensor Based on Microfiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer With Tapered Seven-Core Fiber
Yancheng Ji, Dan Sun, Yu-Pei Chen, Yuechun Shi, Juan Cao, Guoan Zhang, Zhanghua Han, Chinhua Wang, Xiaojun Zhu
Abstract
A Microfiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MMZI) based on tapered seven-core fiber (SCF) for curvature measurement has been reported and demonstrated. The tapered SCF promoted the light coupling efficiency from the single-mode fiber (SMF) to the SCF, which results in the transmission spectrum with a low loss and high extinction ratio. In the process of curvature measurement, the sensitivity can reach up to 174.02957 nm/m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−1</sup> , which is the highest curvature sensitivity in the MZI with SCF as best as we have known. Furthermore, the maximum temperature sensitivity is 0.00956 nm/°C when the temperature changes from 30 °C to 140 °C. It shows that this sensor is naturally insensitive to temperature, which has a good performance in avoiding the cross-sensitivity effect between the temperature and curvature.