Temperature Sensing Characteristics of Two Fundamental Solitons in a Glycerin-Filled Microstructured Optical Fiber

In this article, the temperature sensing characteristics of two fundamental solitons in a glycerin-filled six-hole microstructured optical fiber (MOF) were systematically exploited through experiment and simulation. The six-hole MOF has a large duty cycle, which can increase the space to fill the temperature-sensitive material glycerin for improving the temperature sensing sensitivity. By detecting the center wavelength shift of 3 dB bandwidth of two fundamental solitons at 1050 nm, 390 mW, a maximum sensitivity of −0.601 nm/°C was obtained based on the first fundamental soliton and −0.598 nm/°C was obtained based on the second. Simulation results combined with the experimental results showed that the higher the average pump power, the higher the temperature sensitivity, and the temperature sensitivity of the first was slightly higher than that of the second. The difference in sensing characteristics between the two fundamental solitons discovered in this study could provide a novel solution to solve the cross-sensitivity of dual-parameter sensing. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research about utilizing two fundamental solitons for temperature sensing, which broadens the boundary of the nonlinear-based sensors, and has promising prospects in the fields of national defense security, disease monitoring, agriculture production, etc.