Highly sensitive hollow-core fiber for spectroscopic sensing applications

Abstract

In this article, a highly sensitive hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed and numerically investigated for the application of different chemical identification in the terahertz regime. Commercially available COMSOL Multiphysics software is used to evaluate the sensing and propagation characteristics of the proposed sensor. The numerical analysis informs that extremely high relative sensitivity around 98% can be achieved from the sensor at optimum structural condition. Moreover, at optimum structural dimension and operating frequency significantly low effective material loss (<0.005cm−1) and confinement loss (<10−16cm−1) offered by the proposed fiber buttresses its sensing performance. In addition, other propagation characteristics (numerical aperture, effective area, and dispersion) are also investigated rigorously in this article. The excellent sensing characteristics of the proposed sensor make it a competitive candidate in different industrial sectors like the food and beverage industry.

Keywords

• Terahertz sensor
• Relative sensitivity
• Confinement loss
• Effective material loss