Fiber Bragg gratings for low-temperature measurement.

We demonstrate the use of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) as a monolithic temperature sensor from ambient to liquid nitrogen temperatures, without the use of any auxiliary embedding structure. The Bragg gratings, fabricated in three different types of fibers and characterized with a high density of points, confirm a nonlinear thermal sensitivity of the fibers. With a conventional interrogation scheme it is possible to have a resolution of 0.5 K for weak pure-silica-core FBGs and 0.25 K using both boron-doped and germanium-doped standard fibers at 77 K. We quantitatively show for the first time that the nonlinear thermal sensitivity of the FBG arises from the nonlinearity of both thermo-optic and thermal expansion coefficients, allowing consistent modeling of FBGs at low temperatures.