Cascaded interferometers structure based on dual-pass Mach-Zehnder interferometer and Sagnac interferometer for dual-parameter sensing.

In this article, we propose and demonstrate a cascaded interferometers structure based on a dual-pass Mach-Zehnder interferometer (DP-MZI) and a Sagnac interferometer (SI) for simultaneous measurement of strain and lateral stress. The cascaded interferometers configuration consists of a SI structure following with a MZI setup. By inserting a section of polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF) in the sensing loop of the SI structure, an inline interference between the two orthogonal polarization modes of PM-PCF, as well as the interference between the sensing arm and the reference arm of the DP-MZI, i.e., the cascaded interferometers with dual interference, are realized. Theoretical study shows that the reflection spectrum of such cascaded interferometers is consisted of two parts: the big spectrum envelope owing to the SI and the fine interference fringes as a result of the DP-MZI. Experimental results show that the SI achieves the sensitivity of lateral stress and strain 1.28 nm/kPa, 0.78 pm/µε, respectively, while the DP-MZI achieves -0.009 nm/kPa and 5.65 pm/µε, demonstrating the ability for dual parameters measurement with high accuracy.