Demonstration of Coherent Interference between Acoustic Waves Using a Fiber Ring Resonator

Abstract

Optical fibers were previously demonstrated to propagate and detect acoustic modes that were converted from Lamb waves for structural health-monitoring applications; typically, a fiber Bragg grating sensor in the optical fiber is used to detect acoustic modes. Acoustic modes can transfer from one fiber to another through a simple adhesive bond coupler, preserving the waveform of the acoustic mode. This paper experimentally investigates the coherence of acoustic waves through the adhesive coupler, using a fiber ring resonator (FRR) configuration. This configuration was chosen because the wave coupled to the second fiber interferes with the original wave after it encircles the fiber ring. We performed this experiment using different geometries of optical fibers in the ring, including a standard single-mode optical fiber, a hollow silica capillary tube, and a large-diameter multi-mode fiber. The results demonstrate that the acoustic wave, when transferring through an adhesive coupler, interferes coherently even when the main and ring fibers are of different types. Finally, we demonstrate that the FRR can be applied for sensing applications by measuring the mode attenuations in the ring due to a changing external environment (water-level sensing) and measuring the optical-path length change in the ring (temperature sensing).

Keywords

• structural health monitoring
• optical fiber
• acoustic coupling
• coherent interference
• fiber ring resonator