Highly sensitive and simple method for refractive index sensing of liquids in microstructured optical fibers using four-wave mixing

We present both experimental measurements and simulations for a simple fiber-optical liquid refractive index sensor, made using only commercially available components and without advanced postprocessing of the fiber. Despite the simplicity, we obtain the highest sensitivity experimentally demonstrated to date for aqueous solutions (refractive index around 1.33), which is relevant for extensions to biosensing. The sensor is based on measuring the spectral shift of peaks arising from four-wave mixing (FWM), when filling the holes of a microstructured fiber with different liquid samples and propagating nanosecond pulses through the silica-core of the fiber. To the best of our knowledge, this is also the first experiment where a liquid is filled into the holes of a solid-core microstructured fiber to control the phase-match conditions for FWM. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America