Abstract
Optical fibre sensors make use of diverse physical effects to measure parameters such as strain, temperature and electric field. Here we introduce a new class of reconfigurable fibre sensor, based on a ‘flying-particle’ optically trapped inside a hollow-core photonic crystal fibre and illustrate its use in electric field and temperature sensing with high spatial resolution. The electric field distribution near the surface of a multi-element electrode is measured with a resolution of ∼100 μm by monitoring changes in the transmitted light signal due to the transverse displacement of a charged silica microparticle trapped within the hollow core. Doppler-based velocity measurements are used to map the gas viscosity, and thus the temperature, along a hollow-core photonic crystal fibre. The flying-particle approach represents a new paradigm in fibre sensors, potentially allowing multiple physical quantities to be mapped with high positional accuracy over kilometre-scale distances.
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P.St.J.R. conceived the idea, all authors designed the experimental setup and D.S.B. performed the experiments. D.S.B., T.G.E. and P.St.J.R. analysed the data and prepared the manuscript.
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Bykov, D., Schmidt, O., Euser, T. et al. Flying particle sensors in hollow-core photonic crystal fibre. Nature Photon 9, 461–465 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.94
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.94