S-tapered photonic crystal fiber interferometers for refractive index sensing

Abstract. An experimental investigation on an S-tapered photonic crystal fiber interferometer is presented. The whole fabrication process was carried out using a standard splicing machine. The interferometer shows a compact and stable structure with a waist diameter of 110 μm, taper length of 280 μm, and axial offset of 40 μm. The transmission spectra indicated that it is highly sensitive to the surrounding refractive index (RI) and insensitive to temperature. Resolutions of 3.3×10−4 and 8.0×10−5 RI units were achieved in the 1.33 to 1.38 and 1.38 to 1.44 range, respectively. Furthermore, its temperature dependence was only 4  pm/°C.

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