In-fiber Michelson interferometer based on double-cladding fiber for refractive index sensing

An in-fiber Michelson interferometer is proposed based on a double-cladding (DC) special fiber. With the DC special fiber, light wave can be partially coupled into outer cladding. The in-fiber Michelson interferometer can be constructed by splicing a length of DC fiber into standard single mode fiber (SMF). The interferometer is very sensitive to ambient refractive index change because fiber cladding is as one of interference arms. A sensitivity of 36nm/RIU has been achieved in the range of 1.33~1.40 in this work. The proposed technique has the dominant advantage of simple fabrication process, which can be expected to have wide applications in biosensors and chemical sensors.