In-fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer based on polarization-maintaining fiber for displacement and temperature sensing

A displacement sensor based on polarization-maintaining fiber has been proposed and proved in experiment. The polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) is sandwiched with two graded-index multimode fibers (GI MMF), which form the Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) sensor. Graded-index multimode fiber serve as an optical coupler for modes conversion. The results show that with the increase of displacement, the spectrum moves to the long wavelength direction, but when temperature increases, the spectrum has a red shift, which means that the displacement and temperature can be measured separately according to the wavelength drift direction. The sensor consists of 4 mm GI MMF and 14 mm PMF, which can exhibit the displacement sensitivity of –9.275 pm/μm in the range of 0–600 μm. In addition, temperature will also affect the sensitivity of displacement measurement, so the sensitivity of the sensor to temperature is also measured. The results show that the selected monitoring dip provides a better temperature sensitivity of 33.605 pm/°C in the range of 35–75°C. The sensor is easy to fabricate and does not has any functional coating, which make it become a good candidate in the industrial field.