Single tilted Bragg reflector fiber laser for simultaneous sensing of refractive index and temperature

Abstract

A type of fiber laser, called tilted Bragg reflector fiber laser (TBR-FL), is proposed and its application in simultaneous sensing of surrounding refractive index (SRI) and temperature is demonstrated. This FL is formed by a pair of wavelength and tilt-angle matched tilted fiber Bragg gratings (TFBGs) that acted both as a resonant cavity and sensing element. A unique spectral feature of the TBR-FL is the presence of grating tilt-induced cladding modes spectrum that does not appear in other type of FL, which provides an extra sensing mechanism. By employing a simple experimental setup with the discrete wavelet transform as the demodulation technique, simultaneously sensing of SRI and temperature are achieved by measuring and analyzing the wavelet coefficients shifts of the laser output and averaged cladding modes.