Fiber loop ring-down cavity integrated U-bent single-mode-fiber for magnetic field sensing

A novel magnetic field sensing system based on the fiber loop ring-down technique is proposed in this paper. In the fiber loop, a U-bent single-mode-fiber structure coated with magnetic fluid (MF) serves as the sensing head, and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is introduced to compensate for the intrinsic loss of the cavity. The ring-down time of the system varies with the change of applied magnetic field due to the tunable absorption coefficient and refractive index of the MF. Therefore, measurement of the magnetic field can be realized by monitoring the ring-down time. The experimental results show that the performance of the system is extremely dependent on the interrogation wavelength, because both the gain of the EDFA and the loss of the sensing head are wavelength dependent. We found that at the optimal wavelength, the ratio of the gain to loss attained its maximum. The sensing system was experimentally demonstrated and a sensitivity of −0.5951  μs/Oe was achieved.