Development of a low-cost and miniaturized polarimetric optical fiber strain sensor system using Jones calculus

A polarimetric sensor system that determines strains by measuring changes in the polarization state in a single-mode optical fiber is presented. In experiments, circularly wound fibers were used as a sensor, and changes in the polarization states in the fibers were measured as the sensor was rotated. In addition, it was hypothesized that an arbitrary optical path can be computed with the Jones matrices of two rotated wave plates, and the feasibility of this hypothesis is demonstrated by experimental results. The measured values of the polarization states agree well with the calculated values obtained using the Jones matrices. Furthermore, the strains obtained using the calculated polarization states are in good agreement with the strains applied in the experiment. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the strain sensor system reported in this paper. (C) 2018 The Japan Society of Applied Physics