Optical fiber sensors have been intensively studied and successfully employed in various human social activities and daily living, such as industrial production, civil engineering, medicine, transportation, national defense and so on. According to different structures, optical sensors could be divided into various categories. This thesis focuses on studying different kinds of in-line fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometers, which have played an important role among the optical interferometric fiber sensors. The structure composition, fabrication process, physical principle and practical applications of two novel in-line fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometers are proposed and discussed in detail in this work. The tapered bend-insensitive fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (BIF-MZI) is firstly fabricated and used as a fiber vibrometer. The unique double-cladding structure of bend-insensitive fiber not only provides higher mechanical strength to the sensor, but also guarantees a more uniform transmission spectrum， since only a few inner-cladding modes are left interfering with the core mode. A high sensitivity and fast response intensity demodulation scheme is employed by monitoring the power fluctuation of the BIF-MZI at the operation wavelength. Both damped and continuous vibrations are detected using the proposed sensor. It is demonstrated that this sensor responses to an extremely wide range of frequencies from 1 Hz up to 500 kHz with high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The discrimination of temperature and axial strain is realized based on the dispersion effects of high-order-mode fiber (HOMF) by forming a single mode fiber-high-order-mode fiber-single mode fiber (SMF-HOMF-SMF) structure based in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Unlike some kinds of in-line MZIs such as tapered and core–offset structures whose cladding modes are excited with different types under changing temperature and strain circumstances, the HOMF is capable of supporting three stable core modes, which guarantees a reliable and repeatable measurements within a large temperature or strain range. A new method based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is employed to analyze the mode couplings and their chromatic dispersion and intermodal dispersion properties in HOMF. The strong dispersion effects lead to a multi-peak feature in the spatial frequency spectrum. It is found that peaks that denote the waveform periods at positions that are beyond the critical wavelength possess highly sensitive and distinct phase responses to external disturbances, which provides the possibility to realize the discrimination measurements with high sensitivities and smaller errors by selecting appropriate peaks. The phase demodulation scheme is applied to quantify the temperature and strain changes in terms of phase shifts. Appropriate peak selections according to the practical needs would provide an easy access for applications where more than two parameters are required to be discriminated.

A system for recording the trajectories of non-planar shocks and particle tracers within a shock tube flow has been developed. The optics consists of a double-pass schlieren system with a multiply pulsed ruby laser as light source. The laser is synchronized with a high speed framing camera. A grid of ammonium chloride tracers is injected into the flow field, and the motion of the tracers behind the Mach reflection of intermediate strength shocks has been recorded. Analysis of the trajectories has yielded the space and time variation of the physical properties within the flow field. / Graduate / 0605

A key factor in the vertical integration of optical waveguide devices is the uniformity of the surface across which the coupling takes place. This thesis focuses on the fabrication of annealed proton-exchanged (APE) waveguides vertically integrated with chalcogenide waveguides. While titanium diffused waveguides form a surface bump that is approximately twice the size of the originally deposited film, an annealed proton-exchange process produces waveguides with surfaces having 90% less deformation. The theory behind wave guiding devices is explored in this work along with the modeling and simulation of APE waveguides. The results obtained from the simulations are used to aid in the fabrication of these devices. A detailed review of the fabrication process of APE waveguides and chalcogenide waveguides is provided with results obtained from measurements. The first known coupling results for vertically integrated chalcogenide waveguides on top of annealed proton-exchanged waveguides are recorded. This work is concluded with future directions for this research including lowering losses by obtaining better simulation parameters and vertically integrating ring resonators along with ways in which to do this.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-111).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-301). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Techn. University, Diss., 2004--Berlin.

Numerical simulations of Mach shock reflections have shown that the Mach stem can bifurcate as a result of the slip line jetting forward. Numerical simulations were conducted in this study which determined that these bifurcations occur when the Mach number is high, the ramp angle is high, and specific heat ratio is low. It was clarified that the bifurcation is a result of a sufficiently large velocity difference across the slip line which drives the jet. This bifurcation phenomenon has also been observed after triple point collisions in detonation simulations. A triple point reflection was modelled as an inert shock reflecting off a wedge, and the accuracy of the model at early times after reflection indicates that bifurcations in detonations are a result of the shock reflection process. Further investigations revealed that bifurcations likely contribute to the irregular structure observed in certain detonations.

This thesis report works on optically characterizing waveguide based biosensors consisting of thin, narrow Au stripes embedded in CYTOP. The devices were examined using an ever evolving and improving interrogation setup, variations of which are described in detail in this document. A number of changes were made to the setup configuration in order to reduce noise levels and increase efficiency and accuracy of acquired measurements. Waveguides of varying configurations (straight waveguides and Mach-Zehnder Interferometers with etched and cladded channels) are described and optically characterized. The characterization results of these devices are presented in this thesis. Bulk index measurements are carried out in order to determine a suitable bio-sensing solution with a refractive index matched to that of CYTOP. Step index measurements clearly distinguishing the introduction of sensing solutions of refractive indices varying from one another, are made available. Preliminary bio-sensing experiments involving detection of change in refractive index of sensing fluid as well as adlayer thickness with the introduction of analytes binding to the waveguide surface that has been functionalized with antibodies, using both straight and cladded waveguides with single mode outputs are studied.

Optical fiber sensors have been intensively studied and successfully employed in various human social activities and daily living, such as industrial production, civil engineering, medicine, transportation, national defense and so on. According to different structures, optical sensors could be divided into various categories. This thesis focuses on studying different kinds of in-line fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometers, which have played an important role among the optical interferometric fiber sensors. The structure composition, fabrication process, physical principle and practical applications of two novel in-line fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometers are proposed and discussed in detail in this work. The tapered bend-insensitive fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (BIF-MZI) is firstly fabricated and used as a fiber vibrometer. The unique double-cladding structure of bend-insensitive fiber not only provides higher mechanical strength to the sensor, but also guarantees a more uniform transmission spectrum， since only a few inner-cladding modes are left interfering with the core mode. A high sensitivity and fast response intensity demodulation scheme is employed by monitoring the power fluctuation of the BIF-MZI at the operation wavelength. Both damped and continuous vibrations are detected using the proposed sensor. It is demonstrated that this sensor responses to an extremely wide range of frequencies from 1 Hz up to 500 kHz with high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The discrimination of temperature and axial strain is realized based on the dispersion effects of high-order-mode fiber (HOMF) by forming a single mode fiber-high-order-mode fiber-single mode fiber (SMF-HOMF-SMF) structure based in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Unlike some kinds of in-line MZIs such as tapered and core–offset structures whose cladding modes are excited with different types under changing temperature and strain circumstances, the HOMF is capable of supporting three stable core modes, which guarantees a reliable and repeatable measurements within a large temperature or strain range. A new method based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is employed to analyze the mode couplings and their chromatic dispersion and intermodal dispersion properties in HOMF. The strong dispersion effects lead to a multi-peak feature in the spatial frequency spectrum. It is found that peaks that denote the waveform periods at positions that are beyond the critical wavelength possess highly sensitive and distinct phase responses to external disturbances, which provides the possibility to realize the discrimination measurements with high sensitivities and smaller errors by selecting appropriate peaks. The phase demodulation scheme is applied to quantify the temperature and strain changes in terms of phase shifts. Appropriate peak selections according to the practical needs would provide an easy access for applications where more than two parameters are required to be discriminated.

The development of reliable, affordable, and efficient sensors is a key step forward in providing tools for efficient monitoring of critical environmental parameters. Fiber-optic sensors are already widely used in various industrial sensing fields. They have proven themselves reliable in harsh environments and can measure different physical quantities, such as temperature, pressure, strain, refractive index (RI), and humidity. Fiber-optic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) is a well-studied optical fiber interferometer that has proven capacity for sensing ambient refractive index. In this dissertation, we present Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) embedded in a microfiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer designed for sensing temperature and refractive index. The MZI is constructed by splicing a short length of 40-μm-diameter microfiber between standard single mode fibers. A one-millimeter-long FBG is then written in the microfiber using a direct, point-by-point, ultrafast laser inscription method. The microfiber MZI shows only moderate sensitivity to ambient refractive index and temperature changes. In contrast, the microfiber FBG is insensitive to ambient refractive index change, while it exhibits typical sensitivity to temperature variation. These distinct characteristics of the FBG and MZI sensors enable the simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature as well as temperature compensation in ambient refractive index measurement. Further, we report the use of a fiber-optic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer to measure core refractive index changes written by femtosecond laser irradiation. The core-offset interferometer was constructed by splicing a lightly misaligned stub of standard single-mode fiber between the device’s lead-in and lead-out optical fibers. When the core refractive index of an in-fiber interferometer is altered, that process changes the phase of the core light. Since the phase of light propagating in the cladding (reference arm) remains unchanged, the transmission fringe pattern of the interferometer undergoes a spectral shift. In the present research, that spectral shift was used to quantify the effective core refractive index change in a standard single-mode fiber. In addition, we designed and developed a custom flame-based tapering machine that is used to fabricate miniaturized Mach–Zehnder interferometers (MZIs) using sharply tapered photonic crystal fiber (PCF). This technique produces sensors capable of highly sensitive ambient refractive index (RI) measurements. The sensor is fabricated by fusion splicing a small stub of PCF between standard single-mode fibers with fully collapsed air holes of the PCF in a splicing region. Tiny flame geometry enables the sharp tapering of the PCF, resulting in a short fiber length and high RI sensitivity. It appears that sharp tapering has a great impact on RI sensitivity enhancement, when compared with methods that decrease taper waist diameter. The tapering technique is further used to construct the Mach-Zehnder Interferometer-based fiber-optic refractive index (RI) sensor by uniformly tapering standard single mode fibers (SMF) for RI measurement. The fabricated MZI device does not require any splicing of fibers and shows excellent RI sensitivity. / Graduate