Time resolved Brillouin fiber-spectrometer.

This report introduces a novel time resolved Brillouin spectrometer, consisting of an opto-acoustic transducer which resides on the tip of a single-mode optical fiber of arbitrary length with 125 μm outer diameter and 5 μm sensing diameter. Demonstrated here are proof of concept spectroscopic measurements - shifts in Brillouin frequency - with sensitivities of 41±3MHz/%wt and 2.5±0.6 MHz/°C for changes in water-salinity and water-temperature, respectively, and an interpolated frequency resolution of 9±2 MHz. The technique benefits from low-cost raw materials, scalable fabrication, scalable pixel density, easy alignment, and data acquisition speeds down to 0.4 s: traits which make this compatible with in vivo applications.