Dumbbell-Shaped Mach–Zehnder Interferometer With High Sensitivity of Refractive Index

Author

Xiaodong Wen ; Tigang Ning ; Haidong You ; Jing Li ; Ting Feng ; Li Pei ; Wei Jian

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of All Opt. Network & Adv. Telecommun. Network of EMC, Beijing Jiaotong Univ., Beijing, China

Volume

25

Issue

18

fYear

2013

fDate

Sept.15, 2013

Firstpage

1839

Lastpage

1842

Abstract

We proposed and fabricated a dumbbell-shaped Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) on a single mode fiber using a revised program of the fusion splicer. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time one has produced and applied the MZI of this configuration to detect liquids refractive indexes. The dumbbell shape has a length of 1.9 mm and a minimum waist diameter of 63 μm. The wavelengths shift with the changing of surrounding refractive indexes, and the refractive index sensitivity is as high as 251 nm per refractive index unit with the linear range of 1.333-1.391 that is tens of times higher than the MZI based on two fiber tapers.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; optical fibre fabrication; refractive index measurement; dumbbell-shaped Mach-Zehnder interferometer; fusion splicer; liquid refractive index sensitivity; optical fabrication; single mode fiber; size 1.9 mm; size 63 mum; Optical fiber sensors; Optical fibers; Refractive index; Sensitivity; Strain; Temperature measurement; Temperature sensors; Fiber-optic sensor; Mach–Zehnder Interferometer; fiber tapers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2013.2277611

Filename

6576126