Yongqin Yu

High-Sensitivity Mach–Zehnder Interferometric Temperature Fiber Sensor Based on a Waist-Enlarged Fusion Bitaper

An all-fiber high-sensitivity temperature fiber sensor based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer in standard single-mode fibers (SMFs) is described. The interferometer consists of two concatenated waist-enlarged fusion bitapers which are fabricated simply by cleaving and fusion splicing. It is demonstrated that such an all-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer incorporates intermodal interference between the LP01 mode and a high-order cladding mode of LP07 mode. Its response to temperature is investigated and a high sensitivity of 0.070 nm/°C is obtained by a 7.5 mm interferometer. This simple, low-cost and easy-to-fabricate core-cladding modal interferometer with entire SMF-based structure also has great potential in diverse sensing applications.

Some features of the photonic crystal fiber temperature sensor with liquid ethanol filling.

We introduce a novel photonic crystal fiber (PCF) temperature sensor that is based on intensity modulation and liquid ethanol filling of air holes with index-guiding PCF. The mode field, the effective refractive index and the confinement loss of PCF were all found to become highly temperature-dependent when the thermo-optic coefficient of the liquid ethanol used is higher than that of silicon dioxide and this temperature dependence is an increasing function of the d/Lambda ratio and the input wavelength. All the experiments and simulations are discussed in this paper and the temperature sensitivity of transmission power was experimentally determined to be 0.315 dB/ degrees C for a 10-cm long PCF.

Ambient refractive index-independent bending vector sensor based on seven-core photonic crystal fiber using lateral offset splicing

A novel, simple, and compact optical fiber directional bending vector sensor based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The device consists of a piece of seven-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sandwiched between two single mode fibers (SMFs) with a lateral offset splicing joint that covering two cores of PCF. Bending sensitivity of the seven-core PCF based MZI is changed by an axial rotation angle, which shows its capacity for recognizing positive and negative directions. Within a curvature range of -7.05 m-1 to 7.05 m-1, the calculated bending sensitivities of two resonant central wavelengths with opposite fiber orientations are 1.232 nm/m-1 and 1.174 nm/m-1, respectively. This novel MZI is formed by invoking interference between the LP01-like supermode and other higher order supermodes in the core, which leads to insensitive to ambient refractive index (ARI). We have also investigated the transmission characteristics of the sensor with the temperature change.

6-W diode-end-pumped Nd:GdVO4/LBO quasi-continuous-wave red laser at 671 nm.

We report a high-power diode-end-pumped Q-switched Nd:GdVO4 red laser through intracavity frequency-doubling with a type-I critical phase-matched LBO crystal. The maximum average output power at 671 nm was obtained to be 6 W at the repetition frequency of 47 kHz, with the corresponding optical conversion efficiency of 12.8% and the pulse width of about 97 ns. At the average output power around 5 W, the power stability was better than 5.8% for one hour.

Sensitivity-enhanced high-temperature sensing using all-solid photonic bandgap fiber modal interference

A wavelength-encoded interferometric high-temperature sensor based on an all-solid photonic bandgap fiber (AS-PBF) is reported. It consists of a small piece of AS-PBF spliced core offset with standard single-mode fibers. Two core modes LP(01) and LP(11) are conveniently utilized as optical arms to form Mach-Zehnder-type interference at both the first and the second photonic bandgaps, and the maximum extinction ratio exceeds 25 dB. Experimental and theoretical investigation of its response to temperature confirms that high temperatures up to 700 °C can be effectively sensed using such an AS-PBF interferometer, and benefiting from a large effective thermo-optic coefficient of fiber structure, the sensitivity can be significantly enhanced (71.5 pm/°C at 600 °C).

Demodulation of diaphragm based acoustic sensor using Sagnac interferometer with stable phase bias.

A stable phase demodulation system for diaphragm-based acoustic sensors is reported. The system is based on a modified fiber-optic Sagnac interferometer with a stable quadrature phase bias, which is independent of the parameters of the sensor head. The phase bias is achieved passively by introducing a nonreciprocal frequency shift between the counter-propagating waves, avoiding the use of complicated active servo-control. A 100 nm-thick graphite diaphragm-based acoustic sensor interrogated by the proposed demodulation system demonstrated a minimum detectable pressure level of ~450 µPa/Hz(1/2) and an output signal stability of less than 0.35 dB over an 8-hour period. The system may be useful as a universal phase demodulation unit for diaphragm-based acoustic sensors as well as other sensors operating in a reflection mode.

Micro-bending vector sensor based on six-air-hole grapefruit microstructure fiber using lateral offset splicing

A one-dimensional micro-bending vector sensor based on two-mode interference has been introduced. This device was fabricated by lateral offset splicing a piece of six-air-hole grapefruit microstructure fiber (GMF) with single mode fiber (SMF). Variation of effective mode index occurred by micro-bending was investigated in simulation and experiment. This device exhibits micro-bending sensitivities of 0.441 nm/m(-1) and -0.754 nm/m(-1) at 0° and 180° bending orientations, respectively. Moreover, this sensor is immune to surrounding refractive index (SRI) and presents a low crosstalk of temperature.

Passively Q-switching induced by the smallest single-walled carbon nanotubes

We report a passively Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) by using the smallest single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with a diameter of 0.3 nm as the saturable absorber. These small SWNTs are fabricated in the nanochannels of a ZnAPO-11 (AEL) single crystal. By inserting one of the AEL crystal into an EDFL cavity pumped by a 980 nm laser diode, stable passive Q-switching is achieved for a threshold pump power of 206.2 mW, and 4.73 μs pulses with a repetition rate of 41.78 kHz and an average output power of 3.75 mW are obtained for a pump power of 406 mW.

Cladding-filled graphene in a photonic crystal fiber as a saturable absorber and its first application for ultrafast all-fiber laser

Abstract. We demonstrate a saturable absorber (SA) based on cladding-filled graphene in a specially designed and manufactured photonic crystal fiber (PCF) for the first time. The saturation absorption property is achieved through the evanescent coupling between the guided light and the cladding-filled graphene layers. To boost the mutual interaction, the PCF is designed to contain five large air holes in the cladding and small-core region. Employing this graphene-PCF SA device, we construct an erbium-doped all-fiber laser oscillator and achieve mode-locked operation. This device can pave the way for high power and all-fiber applications of photonics with graphene with some unique advantages, such as single-mode operation, nonlinearity enhancement, high-power tolerance, environmental robustness, all-fiber configuration, and easy fabrication.

Mode-beating-enabled stopband narrowing in all-solid photonic bandgap fiber and sensing applications.

In this paper, core-cladding modal beating in a short piece of all-solid photonic bandgap fiber (AS-PBF) is observed in longitudinal propagation direction. It is demonstrated that at the stopband range of AS-PBF, the power could transfer back and forth between the fiber core and the first layer of high-index rods. Both experimental results and the theoretical analysis from transverse coupled mode theory confirm that the 3-dB width of the sharp stopband could be significantly narrowed by multicycles of such core-cladding modal couplings, which is of great benefit to the high-resolution sensing applications. Based on such a guiding regime, a high-temperature sensor head is also made and its response to temperature is tested to be of 59.9 pm/°C.