Opt Quant Electron (2007) 39:481489

DOI 10.1007/s11082-007-9084-6
Measurements of sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure
and temperature in highly birefringent photonic crystal
bers
Tadeusz Martynkien Marcin Szpulak Gabriela Statkiewicz
Grzegorz Golojuch Jacek Olszewski Waclaw Urbanczyk
Jan Wojcik Pawel Mergo Mariusz Makara Tomasz Nasilowski
Francis Berghmans Hugo Thienpont
Received: 9 November 2006 / Accepted: 22 January 2007 / Published online: 22 June 2007
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract We report on experimental studies of polarimetric sensitivity to hydrostatic
pressure and temperature in two highly birefringent index guided photonic crystal bers,
in which birefringence is induced by one row of the cladding holes with diameters smaller
than the other cladding holes. The sensitivity measurements were carried out in the spec-
tral range from 0.6m to 1.6m. Our results show that absolute value of the polarimetric
sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure can reach 23rad/MPam, which is almost one order of
magnitude higher than in conventional bers with elliptical core. Simultaneously, polarime-
tric sensitivity to temperature is at least two orders of magnitude lower than in conventional
highly birefringent bers. Moreover, we proved experimentally that one of the investigated
bers is completely insensitive to temperature at certain wavelength.
Keywords Photonic crystal bers Birefringence Temperature Hydrostatic pressure
Optical ber sensor
T. Martynkien (B) M. Szpulak G. Statkiewicz G. Golojuch J. Olszewski W. Urbanczyk
Institute of Physics, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wyb. Wyspianskiego 27,
50-370 Wroclaw, Poland,
e-mail: tadeusz.martynkien@pwr.wroc.pl
T. Martynkien T. Nasilowski F. Berghmans H. Thienpont
Department of Applied Physics and Photonics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel,
Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
J. Wojcik P. Mergo M. Makara
Laboratory of Optical Fiber Technology, Maria Curie-Skodowska University,
Pl. M. Curie-Sklodowskiej 3, 20-031 Lublin, Poland
F. Berghmans
SCKCEN, Boeretang, Mol 2400, Belgium
1 3
482 T. Martynkien et al.
1 Introduction
It is well known that conventional highly birefringent (HB) bers are used in polarimetric and
interferometric ber-optic sensors for monitoring a variety of measurands including tempera-
ture, hydrostatic pressure, and strain (Culshowand Dakin 1988; Wolinski 2000). Therefore, it
is interesting to explore the sensing capabilities of highly birefringent index-guided photonic
crystal bers (HBPCFs). There are only a fewpapers published so far, reporting on measure-
ments of temperature sensitivity in PCFs with low (Michie et al. 2004; Ritari et al. 2004) and
high birefringence (Kim and Kang 2004; Kotynski et al. 2004; Zhao et al. 2004; Nasilowski
et al. 2005; Statkiewicz et al. 2004; Urbanczyk et al. 2005, Martynkien et al. 2005). These
reports show that polarimetric sensitivity to temperature in HB PCFs strongly depends upon
ber geometry and at = 0.83 m may reach as low values as K
T
=0.003rad/Km for
the ber with two large holes adjacent to the core and K
T
= 0.014rad/Km for the ber with
elliptical core consisting of triple defect (Urbanczyk et al. 2005; Nasilowski et al. 2005). The
reported values are at least one order of magnitude lower than the polarimetric sensitivity to
temperature in traditional highly birefringent bers, ranging from0.5rad/Km in the ber
with elliptical core up to K
T
=4rad/Km in the bow-tie ber (Urbanczyk et al. 2001). At
the same time, the polarimetric sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure in HB PCFs is relatively
high and at = 0.83 m equals K
P
=14.8rad/MPam in the ber with two large holes
and K
P
=3.5rad/MPam in the ber with triple defect (Statkiewicz et al. 2004; Nasilowski
et al. 2005). For comparison, the polarimetric sensitivity to pressure in conventional HB -
bers is K
P
=+0.5 rad/MPam in the ber with elliptical core and K
P
=+8rad/MPam in the
bow-tie bers (Urbanczyk et al. 2001).
Inthis work, we present the sensingcharacteristics of air/silica HBPCFs withbirefringence
induced by asymmetrical cladding (one row of the cladding holes has diameter smaller
than the other cladding holes). We measured the spectral behavior of modal birefringence
and polarimetric sensitivity to temperature and hydrostatic pressure in two bers fabricated
from the same preform and having different outer diameters equal respectively to 125 m
and 110 m. Comparison of sensing characteristics of the analyzed bers and the ber of
similar construction, however made of multi-component glass (Bock and Urbanczyk 2004),
proves additionally that polarimetric sensitivity to temperature in HB PCFs highly depends
on material used to their fabrication.
2 Highly birefringent index guided holey bers
The phase and the group modal birefringence, respectively B() and G(), are the two para-
meters characterizing every highly birefringent ber and are dened in the following way:
B =

2

, (1)
G = B
dB
d
, (2)
where x and y are propagation constants of the orthogonally polarized modes of respective
order. In sensing applications, the most important parameter is a polarimetric sensitivity
representing the phase difference between polarization modes induced by unit change of
measurand over unit length of the ber:
1 3
Measurements of sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure 483
Fig. 1 SEM image of the ber with greater diameter (PCF1)
K
X
=
1
L
d

dX
=
2

dB
dX
+
B
L
dL
dX

, (3)
where dB/dX is the susceptibility of the phase modal birefringence to measurand X.
The construction of the investigated index guiding HB PCFs was rst proposed in
(Ortigosa-Blanch et al. 2000). The bers fabricated by Fiber Technology Group UMCS,
Lublin, Poland, Fig. 1, were drawn from the same perform and differ only in outside dia-
meters, which are equal to 125 m and 110 m, respectively. The geometrical parameters of
the investigated bers are as follows: the averaged pitch distance = 4.55 and 3.99 m,
the averaged diameter of greater holes D=4.3 and 3.77 m, the averaged diameter of smaller
holes d=0.9 and 0.79 m, respectively for the ber with greater (PCF1) and smaller (PCF2)
outside diameter. It is worth to mention that the construction of the investigated bers was
optimized in order to assure a minimum number of the cladding holes and simultaneously to
keep the connement losses of the fundamental mode below 1dB/km (Olszewski et al. 2004)
in the spectral range from 0.6m to 1.6m.
3 Measurement of modal birefringence and polarimetric sensitivity to hydrostatic
pressure and temperature
The spectral dependence of the phase modal birefringence for the fundamental mode was
measured using a lateral force method. The measurement set-up is shown in Fig. 2a. As
the light source, we used several LDs operating at different wavelengths. Through applying
a point-like force at approximately a half of the ber length, it was possible to induce a
signicant energy coupling from the initially excited mode to the mode with orthogonal
polarization. The two orthogonal modes interfered after passing trough the Wollaston prism
and the analyzer. The interference pattern observed on CCD camera, in response to the
displacement of the coupling point along the tested ber by the distance L, shifted by M
fringes. The beat length of the tested ber for respective spatial mode was determined from
the following equation:
1 3
484 T. Martynkien et al.
Fig. 2 Schema of the system for measuring phase (a) and group (b) modal birefringence
Fig. 3 Schematic diagram of the system for measuring sensitivity of the phase modal birefringence to tem-
perature and hydrostatic pressure
L
B
=
L
M
, (4)
and nally the phase modal birefringence B was calculated according to the following rela-
tion:
B =

L
B
. (5)
The group modal birefringence in both bers was measured employing a scanning wavelength
method in the setup shown in Fig. 2b. As a light source, we used superluminescent diodes
(SLDs) and ASE source. Due to interference between polarization modes, the outgoing
spectrumwas modulated by interference fringes. After determining the spectral separation of
the interference fringes , we calculated the absolute value of the group modal birefringence
from the following equation:
|G| =

2
L
, (6)
where is an average wavelength between two successive interference fringes, and L is the
length of the investigated ber. This measurement method doesnt allow to determine the
sing of G. Therefore, we employed a special procedure described in (Statkiewicz et al. 2004)
to identify the sign of G.
Measurements of the polarimetric sensitivity to temperature and hydrostatic pressure were
carried out using the set-up shown in Fig. 3. The light emitted from the source was linearly
1 3
Measurements of sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure 485
polarized at 45

with respect to the polarization axes of the tested ber, allowing to excite
both polarization modes. Part of the investigated ber (about 1.2m long) was installed in a
specially designed pressure chamber and subjected to pressure changes in the range from
0MPa to 10MPa. The light from the ber output passed through the objective O2 and the
Wollaston prism(WP) made of crystalline quartz. Additionally, we applied quartz delay plates
(DL) to compensate for the optical path delay introduced by the tested ber and therefore to
minimize the measurement errors associated with wavelength drift. The polarization axes of
the Wollaston prism and DL were adjusted in parallel with respect to the ber polarization
axes. In such conguration, the Wollaston prism separated spatially the polarization modes,
which nally interfered on the CCD array after passing through an analyzer A.
In the setup shown in Fig. 3, we measured the spectral dependence of the polarimetric
sensitivity to temperature for the bare bers. After removing the polymer coating, part of the
tested ber (about 1.5m long) was placed in a water bath and exposed to the temperature
changes in the range from 20

C to 100

C. Because the temperature induced phase shift is

small, we increased measurement resolution by using Babinet-Solei compensator (BSC) and
/2-waveplate that covered bottom section of the view eld and caused interference fringes
to move in opposite direction than in the upper section of the vieweld. This method allowed
for measuring the phase shifts induced by a temperature change with a resolution of about
/50. Additionally, to compensate for the optical path delay introduced by the ber, several
quartz delay plates (DL) were used. Polarimetric sensitivity to temperature was determined
from the following equation:
K
T
=
1
L(T
2
T
1
)
(2M +m(P
T2
P
T1
)) [rad/m K], (7)
where L is the length of the ber exposed to temperature change by T = T
2
T
1
, M is
the integer number of fringes that moved in response to temperature change, m is the phase
difference corresponding to one division on the drum of the BSC at specic wavelength,
P
T2
and P
T1
are the BSC drum readings corresponding to the collinear fringe alignment
respectively at initial (T
1
) and nal temperature (T
2
).
It is worth mentioning that in conventional HB bers, the rst term in Eq. (3), repre-
senting susceptibility of the modal birefringence to temperature (dB/dT), is of the order of
10
6
10
7
1/K, while the second term representing ber elongation B (dL/L dT = ,
where is thermal expansion coefcient), is of the order of 10
10
1/K (
SiO
2
= 5.5
10
7
1/K, B = 5 10
4
) and is most often neglected when analyzing the temperature
sensitivity of conventional HB bers. In case of the analyzed PCFs we take into account the
thermal expansion, hence the formula for calculating dB/dT is as follows:
dB
dT
=

2
K
T
B
SiO
2
. (8)
The variation of the phase shift (p) =
x

y
induced by hydrostatic pressure was
quite signicant, which made it possible to remove a Babinet-Solei compensator (BSC) and
a /2-waveplate from the set-up shown in Fig. 3 and to determine (p) simply by counting
the interference fringes that moved with respect to the reference point. For each wavelength,
the polarimetric sensitivity to pressure was calculated using the following relation:
K
p
=
2
L
M
p
[rad/mMPa], (9)
1 3
486 T. Martynkien et al.
Fig. 4 Phase (a) and group (b) modal birefringence measured versus wavelength for both investigated bers
where M is a number of fringes that moved in response to pressure increase by p, and
L is the ber length exposed to pressure. The last term in eq. (3), representing the pressure-
induced ber elongation is very small and, therefore, was disregarded in the above formula.
Finally, the susceptibility of the phase modal birefringence to pressure was determined from
the following relation:
dB
dp
=

L
M
p
[1/MPa]. (10)
To identify the sign of the phase changes induced by temperature or presure, we observed
the direction of the fringe displacement, while slowly tuning the measurement wavelength
by increasing temperature of the laser diode. The phase shift induced by varying the
wavelength by may be represented as:
=
2L

2
G. (11)
In the coordinate system shown in Fig.1, the group modal birefringence G is negative for
both analyzed bers. Hence, we conclude that increasing wavelength ( positive) results
in an increase of the phase difference between polarization modes ( > 0). This effect
was used as a reference test to recognize the sign of the measurand-induced phase changes
in the investigated bers. Using such procedure, we recognized the sign of the polarimetric
sensitivity to temperature and to pressure for all measurement wavelengths.
4 Results
The results of measurements of phase and group modal birefringence are presented in Fig. 4.
At = 1.55 m, the phase modal birefringence reaches the level of 1.110
3
and 1.710
3
,
respectively for PCF1 and PCF2 bers. In the coordinate systems we have chosen (Fig. 1),
the phase modal birefringence B for both spatial modes is positive, while the group modal
birefringence G is negative in the whole analyzed spectral range.
Difference in signs of B and G is caused by a very high chromatic dispersion of the phase
modal birefringence (dB/d > 0). The overall measurement error of phase and group modal
birefringence doesnt exceed 4% in the whole spectral range.
We observed linear response to applied pressure changes in both investigated bers. The
spectral dependence of the polarimetric sensitivity K
p
and the susceptibility of modal bire-
fringence dB/dp to hydrostatic pressure measured in both bers are displayed in Fig. 5. The
1 3
Measurements of sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure 487
Fig. 5 Polarimetric sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure K
p
,(a) and susceptibility of phase modal birefringence
(b) to hydrostatic pressure dB/dp measured vs. wavelength for both bers
Fig. 6 Polarimetric sensitivity to temperature K
T
(a) and susceptibility of phase modal birefringence to
temperature dB/dT (b) measured versus wavelength for both bers
absolute value of the sensitivity to pressure in the PCF-2 is about 3.5% lower than in the
PCF-1, and this difference slightly decreases against wavelength. In both bers, the absolute
values of the polarimetric sensitivity K
p
decreases against wavelength, while dB/dp is weakly
wavelength dependent (relative change in the analyzed spectral range is about 8% for both
bers). The overall error in measurements of the pressure sensitivity was about 2%.
The polarimetric sensitivity K
T
and susceptibility of the modal birefringence to tem-
perature dB/dT measured vs. wavelength are shown in Fig. 6. To avoid hysteresis, these
measurements were carried out after removing the polymer coating from part of the ber
exposed to temperature changes. We observed linear response to temperature changes for both
investigated bers. The measurements were repeated up to six times for statistical evaluation,
which reduced the error in measurements of temperature sensitivity to about 20%.
Similarly as in conventional HB bers, the sign of temperature sensitivity is negative and
the absolute value of K
T
and dB/dT decrease against wavelength. In both bers K
T
is highly
dispersive. In PCF-1, K
T
changes between 2.2 10
2
rad/Km at = 0.635 m and
0.8 10
3
rad/Km at = 1.57 m. The most interesting result we obtained for PCF-
2. In this ber, the polarimetric sensitivity K
T
changes its sign from negative to positive at
= 1.44 m. It means that at = 1.44 mthis ber is completely insensitive to temperature.
1 3
488 T. Martynkien et al.
5 Conclusion
The sensitivity to temperature and hydrostatic pressure in HB PCF with geometry simi-
lar to those presented in Fig. 1, however, made of multi-component glass was investigated
in (Bock and Urbanczyk 2004). The sensitivities in this ber measured at = 0.83 m
are equal respectively K
T
=0.066rad/Km and K
p
= 10.3rad/MPam, which makes
the ratio K
p
/K
T
= 156 K/MPa. For the silica bers analyzed in this work, we obtained at
the same wavelength the following experimental values K
p
/K
T
= 1200 K/MPa for PCF1
(K
T
= 0.014rad/Kmand K
p
= 17.4rad/MPam) and K
p
/K
T
= 1400 K/MPa for PCF2
(K
T
= 0.012rad/Km and K
p
= 16.8rad/MPam), respectively. These data show that
although the pressure sensitivity of the investigated holey bers is greater than the sen-
sitivity of the conventional HB bers, it is still modest compared to the side-hole ber
(K
p
=100rad/MPam), which was specially designed for hydrostatic pressure measure-
ments. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that because of much greater sensitivity to
temperature, the ratio K
P
/K
T
in the side-hole ber is about 200K/MPa, which is much lower
value compared to the investigated holey bers.
Moreover, the most interesting result we obtained for the PCF-2 ber, in which the polari-
metric sensitivityK
T
changes its signfromnegative topositive at = 1.44 m. It means that at
= 1.44 mthis ber is completely insensitive to temperature. On the other hand, the sensiti-
vitytohydrostatic pressure at = 1.44 mis approximatelyequal toK
p
= 10 rad/MPam,
which makes this ber especially good candidate for applications in hydrostatic pressure
measurements.
Acknowledgements This work was partially supported by the EC 6th FP Network of Excellence on Micro-
Optics NEMO, by the COST Action 299. In addition, T. M. acknowledges funding from the FWO under
Contract No. GP02906N-FWOSL22.
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