A humidity sensor based on Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) and intracavity sensing of a fiber ring laser is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A compact humidity-sensitive fiber-optic FPI is developed and inserted in a fiber ring laser. Because the output power of the fiber laser is modulated by the reflection loss of the FPI at different ambient humidity, intracavity humidity sensing is induced. The experiment shows that the relative output power of the fiber laser has a good linear response to ambient humidity from 25 %RH to 95 %RH and the humidity sensitivity of 0.202 dB/%RH is obtained with a narrow 3-dB bandwidth and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Furthermore, the excellent performance of the sensor for remote humidity detection is demonstrated. The sensor also shows a low temperature cross-sensitivity, fast time response, and good stability. The proposed sensor has a great potential in high-capacity sensor network and remote detections.

In this letter, a temperature self-compensation high-resolution refractive index (RI) sensor based on intracavity intensity-modulated sensing in a fiber ring laser is demonstrated. A fiber-optic multimode interferometer based on single-mode-no-core-single-mode fiber structure is cascaded with a fiber Bragg grating and used as a reflected sensing head to enhance intensity-modulated depth. It is inserted in a fiber ring laser as a wavelength selective filter and the intracavity intensity-modulated RI sensing is induced for the output intensity of the fiber laser. Furthermore, because the lasing wavelength of the sensor system is sensitive to temperature but insensitive to external RI, the temperature self-compensation measurement can be realized. The RI sensitivity is measured to be -4.98 mW/RIU from 1.3349 to 1.3665. Correspondingly, the relative intensity sensitivity achieves -196.1 dB/RIU from 1.3349 to 1.3544 and -744.6 dB/RIU from 1.3544 to 1.3665. The resolution of the fiber laser sensor is obtained as high as 2 × 10 ^-10 RIU with the signal-to-noise ratio more than 55 dB.

A tunable and compact mid-infrared optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on BaGa₄Se₇ (BGSe) crystal with a repetition rate up to 250 Hz was demonstrated. A high energy and more approachable side-pumped Q-switched Nd:YAG laser was employed as the pump for the BGSe OPO. Due to the pump double-pass single-resonant oscillator (DP-SRO) configuration, the maximum average power of 250 mW and the maximum pulse energy of 1.28 mJ at 4.06 μm was achieved with the repetition rate of 250 Hz and 100 Hz, respectively. The tunable mid-infrared output from 3.42–4.73 μm was obtained. The influence of repetition rate and cavity length was studied and the thermal effect was analyzed.