Towards a High Performance Fiber Laser Hydrophone

The operating principle and theory of a fiber laser bender hydrophone is presented. We report experimental results for a micro-engineered silicon fiber laser hydrophone. The hydrophone has a flat pressure responsivity of 107 dB re Hz/Pa over a bandwidth exceeding 5 kHz, corresponding to ocean noise limited acoustic sensitivity. The first structural resonance of the hydrophone is 9 kHz in water and the acceleration rejection is in excess of 0 dB re ms
$^{{-}2}$
/Pa up to 5 kHz.