Parallel Fabry-Perot interferometers fabricated on multicore-fiber for temperature and strain discriminative sensing.

We experimentally demonstrate parallel Fabry-Perot interferometers (FPIs) fabrication in multicore-fiber with individually variable cavity length, for the purpose of discriminative sensing of temperature and strain. First, we theoretically find that, in order to obtain a small condition number of sensitivity matrix, it is necessary to fabricate parallel FPIs with large cavity difference in single multicore fiber. Then, parallel FPIs are inscribed by femtosecond laser selective micro-holes drilling on the seven-core fiber facet, together with fiber fusion splicing process. By the use of image processing algorithm, individual core position is precisely locked, and then parallel FPIs can be obtained on arbitrary two cores of seven-core fiber. With the location of parallel micro-holes and duration time of fiber fusion splicing adjusted, parallel FPIs with different cavity length of 26µm and 61µm can be simultaneously obtained at the central core and surrounding core, respectively. Consequently, each FPI possesses different sensitivity towards environmental temperature and strain. Finally, a proof-of-concept experiment verifies that relative measurement errors of both temperature and strain discriminative sensing are less than 0.5% and 2.5%, respectively.