A Thermally Annealed Mach-Zehnder Interferometer for High Temperature Measurement

An in-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for high temperature measurement is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The device is constructed of a piece of thin-core fiber (TCF) sandwiched between two short sections of multimode fiber (MMF), i.e., a MMF-TCF-MMF structure. A well-defined interference spectrum is obtained owing to the core-mismatch, and the interference dips are sensitive to the ambient temperature. The experimental results show that the proposed interferometer is capable of high temperature measurement up to 875 °C with a sensitivity of 92 pm/°C over repeated measurements. The explored wavelength drop point may limit the measurement range, which can be improved by repeated thermal annealing.