Abstract

Fiber optic sensors are typically used with expensive tunable lasers or optical spectrum analyzers for wavelength interrogation. We propose to replace the tunable laser by a broadband optical source incorporated with a novel thin linewidth acousto-optic tunable filter. It utilizes optical beam expanders constituted by photonic crystal rows of air holes in ${\mathrm{LiNbO}}_3$ waveguide. A new design is numerically studied for a short structure (with 32 photonic crystal rows) by a two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. Extrapolation of these results to larger structure sizes (about $1\mathrm{cm}$) demonstrates the possibility to develop compact interrogators with $0.4\mathrm{pm}$ wavelength resolution and $40\mathrm{nm}$ tunable range around $1550\mathrm{nm}$.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

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