A Fiber-optic Interferometric Seismometer

Abstract

A fiber-optic interferometric sensor has been developed which consists of a seismic mass of 520 gm supported by two rubber mandrels, each wound with a single layer of single-mode optical fiber 6.5 m long. One end of each fiber is cleaved to enhance reflection. The other ends are interconnected via a fiber-to-fiber 3-dB coupler, forming a Michelson interferometer. When the case of the sensor is displaced, the fiber around one mandrel extends in length while the other contracts. The resulting â push-pullâ mechanical operation of the sensor allows both legs of the interferometer to be active, providing good common mode rejection of spurious effects, as a reference leg is not required. This, together with the fact that the light traverses each leg of a Michelson interferometer twice due to reflection, provides the sensor with four times the sensitivity of a conventionally constructed interferometric sensor. sensitivities of 8500 rad of optical phase shift per micrometer of case displacement have been measured above the massspring resonance, where the sensor operates as a seismometer. Below resonance the sensor operates as an accelerometer with a measured sensitivity of 10 500 rad/g, the highest reported to date. Including both thermodynamic and demodulator noise sources, below resonance the sensor has a detection threshold of l ng/JHz, a 20- dB improvement over the best existing conventional noise vibration sensors.