Optical fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer cavity fabricated by femtosecond laser-induced water breakdown for refractive index sensing.

The Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) cavity in a single-mode fiber with two open faces was fabricated by using the method of femtosecond laser-induced water breakdown. Then the FPI cavity was annealed by the arc discharge to greatly smooth its internal surface. The whole fabrication process features simple operation and high efficiency. The fabricated FPI cavity exhibits a perfect interferometer spectrum with reflection loss of only -3 dB and fringe visibility of almost 30 dB. It can be used as a perfectly reliable liquid refractive index sensor, as it exhibits high sensitivity (1147.48 nm/RIU), good linearity (99.93%), good repeatability, high actual measurement accuracy (1.29×10(-4)RIU), large measurement range, and good temperature insensitive characteristic.