Spheroidal Fabry-Perot microcavities in optical fibers for high-sensitivity sensing

All-optical-fiber Fabry-Perot interferometers (FPIs) with microcavities of different shapes were investigated. It was found that the size and shape of the cavity plays an important role on the performance of these interferometers. To corroborate the analysis, FPIs with spheroidal cavities were fabricated by splicing a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with large voids and a conventional single mode fiber (SMF), using an ad hoc splicing program. It was found that the strain sensitivity of FPIs with spheroidal cavities can be controlled through the dimensions of the spheroid. For example, a FPI whose cavity had a size of ~10x60 μm exhibited strain sensitivity of ~10.3 pm/με and fringe contrast of ~38 dB. Such strain sensitivity is ~10 times larger than that of the popular fiber Bragg gratings (~1.2 pm/με) and higher than that of most low-finesse FPIs. The thermal sensitivity of our FPIs is extremely low (~1pm/°C) due to the air cavities. Thus, a number of temperature-independent ultra-sensitive microscopic sensors can be devised with the interferometers here proposed since many parameters can be converted to strain. To this end, simple vibration sensors are demonstrated.