The Characterization of Optical Fibers for Distributed Cryogenic Temperature Monitoring

Thanks to their characteristics, optical fiber sensors are an ideal solution for sensing applications at cryogenic temperatures, such as the monitoring of superconducting devices. Their applicability at such temperatures, however, is not immediate as optical fibers exhibit a non-linear thermal response which becomes rapidly negligible below 50 K. A thorough analysis of such a response down to cryogenic temperatures then becomes necessary to correctly translate the optical interrogation readings into the actual fiber temperature. Moreover, to increase the fiber sensitivity down to a few kelvin, special coatings can be used. In this manuscript we described the thermal responses experimental characterization of four commercially available optical fiber samples with different polymeric coatings in the temperature range from 5 K to 300 K: two with acrylate coatings of different thickness, one with a polyimide coating and one with a polyether-ether-ketone (PEEK) coating. Multiple thermal cycles were performed consecutively to guarantee the quality of the results and a proper estimate of the sensitivity of the various samples. Finally, we experimentally validated the quality of the measured thermal responses by monitoring the cool down of a dummy superconducting link from room temperature to approximately 50 K using two fibers coated, respectively, in acrylate and PEEK. The temperatures measured with the fibers agreed and matched those obtained by standard electronic sensors, providing, at the same time, further insight in to the cool-down evolution along the cryostat.