Temperature Sensing Utilizing Stimulate Brillouin Scattering Fast Light in Liquid-Filled Photonic Crystal Fibers

Abstract

A novel temperature sensor designed on stimulate Brillouin scattering fast light in liquid-filled photonic crystal fibers is proposed. The time advancement and the Brillouin frequency shift of fast light are simulated according to the three-wave coupling equations of stimulate Brillouin scattering, and the temperature sensing characteristics of the fast light in liquid-filled hexagonal photonic crystal fibers with three different air filling factors are simulated from 20 °C to 70 °C by using the full-vector finite element method. The alcohol-filled photonic crystal fibers exhibit rather sensitive responses to temperature. With temperature varying from 20 °C to 70 °C, the variation of the effective mode area is 2.75 µm at the air filling factor of 0.6, the Brillouin frequency shift is about 11 GHz and its average modification is 1.15 MHz. The time advancement increases with the rise of temperature, its increment can reach up to 4.53 ns at the air filling factor of 0.6 and the pump power of 60 mW, the temperature sensitivity of the time advancement is 0.272 ns/°C.