Distributed temperature sensing based on birefringence effect on transient Brillouin grating in a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate a time-domain distributed temperature sensing based on birefringence effect on transient Brillouin grating (TBG) in a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF), which uses two short pump pulses (2 ns) to excite a TBG and a long probe pulse (6 ns) to map the transient Brillouin grating spectrum (TBGS) associated with the birefringence. The 2 ns pump pulses defines a spatial resolution of 20 cm and a temperature measurement range of a few hundred degrees Celsius, and the long probe pulse provides a narrow TBGS with a temperature resolution of 0.07 degrees C. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America