All-fiber online Raman sensor with enhancement via a Fabry-Perot cavity

In this Letter, a novel all-fiber online Raman sensor with significant signal enhancement via a Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity is proposed and demonstrated. The FP cavity structure is formed by inserting a long-pass coated fiber and a gold-plated capillary into a silver-lined capillary with a gap. A corroded single-mode fiber is inserted into the gold-plated capillary to guide the excitation light into the FP cavity. The multiple reflections of excitation light in the FP cavity have significantly increased the interaction volume between the light and the sample. Experiment results have demonstrated an enhancement factor of 5 times in the detected Raman signal for ethanol compared to that measured using the silver-lined hollow-core fiber-based Raman cell without FP cavity, or 86 times compared with direct detection using a bare fiber tip. The measurement results are in good agreement with theoretical analyses. This Raman sensor with signal enhancement via the FP cavity has the potential to realize rapid sample replacement and online detection with high sensitivity and high accuracy for biochemical applications.