A Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) based fiberoptic refractive index (RI) sensor is constructed by uniformly tapering standard single mode fiber (SMF) for RI measurement. A custom flame-based tapering machine is used to fabricate microfiber MZI sensors directly from SMFs. The fabricated MZI device does not require any splicing of fibers and shows excellent RI sensitivity. The sensor with a cladding diameter of 35.5 µm and length of 20 mm exhibits RI sensitivity of 415 nm/RIU for RI range of 1.332 to 1.384, 1103 nm/RIU for RI range of 1.384 to 1.4204 and 4234 nm/RIU for RI range of 1.4204 to 1.4408, respectively. The sensor reveals a temperature sensitivity of 0.0097 nm/°C, which is relatively low in comparison to its ultra-high RI sensitivity. The proposed inexpensive and highly sensitive optical fiber RI sensors have numerous applications in chemical and biochemical sensing fields.

Monitoring of greenhouse gases is essential to understand the present state and predict the future behavior of greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the greenhouse gas of most immediate concern, because of its high atmospheric concentration and long lifetime. A fiber-optic Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is proposed and demonstrated for the laboratory-scale monitoring of carbon dioxide concentration. The interferometric sensor was constructed using a small stub of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber between a lead-in and lead-out standard single mode fiber, with air-gaps at both interfaces. At room temperature and atmospheric pressure, the sensor shows the sensitivity of 4.3 pm/% CO₂. The device was packaged to demonstrate the laboratory-scale leakage detection and measurement of CO₂ concentration in both subsurface and aqueous environments. The experimental study of this work reveals the great potential of the fiber-optic approach for environmental monitoring of CO₂.

A novel and compact interferometric refractive index (RI) point sensor is developed using hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF) and experimentally demonstrated for high sensitivity detection and measurement of pure gases. To construct the device, the sensing element fiber (HC-PCF) was placed between two single-mode fibers with airgaps at each side. Great measurement repeatability was shown in the cyclic test for the detection of various gases. The RI sensitivity of 4629 nm/RIU was demonstrated in the RI range of 1.0000347–1.000436 for the sensor with an HC-PCF length of 3.3 mm. The sensitivity of the proposed Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) sensor increases when the length of the sensing element decreases. It is shown that response and recovery times of the proposed sensor inversely change with the length of HC-PCF. Besides, spatial frequency analysis for a wide range of air-gaps revealed information on the number and power distribution of modes. It is shown that the power is mainly carried by two dominant modes in the proposed structure. The proposed sensors have the potential to improve current technology’s ability to detect and quantify pure gases.

We report, for the first time, the use of a fiber optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer to measure core refractive index changes written by an ultrafast laser irradiation. The core-offset interferometer was constructed by splicing a slightly misaligned stub of standard single mode fiber between lead-in and lead-out optical fibers. When the core refractive index of an in-fiber interferometer is altered, it changes the phase of the core light. Since the phase of light propagating in the cladding (reference arm) remains unchanged, the transmission fringe pattern of the interferometer observes a spectral shift. The spectral shift was used to quantify the effective core refractive index change in a standard single mode fiber. Measurement of effective refractive index changes as high as 0.01356 and as low as 0.000475 are reported in this work.