Fiber Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy: Present status and study for the application in chemical sensing

1. INTRODUCTION The Fiber Loop Ringdown Spectroscopy (FLRDS) is a novel technique mainly used for fiber optic sensing application. In conventional Cavity Ringdown Spectroscopy (CRDS) the two highly reflecting mirrors are used to create bulk optics cavity [1-8]. The Cavity Ringdown Spectroscopy is also known as Cavity Ringdown Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (CRLAS). This Laser absorption technique has the ability to acquire absorption spectrum of a sample by recording the decay time of the pulse in the cavity as a function of the laser wavelength. The basic configuration of CRDS shown in the Fig.1.

Fig 1. Basic Configuration of Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopic setup The FLRDS is originated from CRDS in which the bulk optics cavity is compensated with an optical fiber cavity. The fiber loop cavity is easy to implement compare to bulk optics cavity ringdown technique because it does not require the alignment of lasers and mirrors. High finesse optical resonator can be fabricated using a short or long length of single mode fiber in a close path [9]. This close path is called fiber loop or fiber ring which is having low loss cavity. Recently in many experiments the etched and tapered single mode fiber are used as a sensor element instead of optical cell [10-13]. The optical cell is a small, transparent square vessel typically made from a high transmission polymer or quartz to hold a solution for analysis. The

sensor element is acting as an evanescent access block (EAB) which can give access to any liquid chemical to use on the fiber core as external cladding material. This technique have the way for intrinsic fiber optic sensor using etched or tapered fiber. The FLRDS can measure the absorption spectra of very less amount of liquid samples. It also used to measure the physical, chemical, biological parameters by measuring cavity loss and this loss determines the decay time of photon energy. The FLRDS technique has been used for strain, temperature and refractive index measurements [14-16]. In the present scenario of Cavity Ringdown Spectroscopic experiments the fiber loop ringdown experiments are giving the most accurate result and it is sure that the stability of the system is very high. The aim of this research review paper is to discuss the fabrication and sensing methodology of the (i) etched and tapered single mode fiber, (ii)the effect of fiber loop output when an etched and tapered fiber used as the sensor element and ( ii) the novel ideas of biochemical sensor using fiber loop ring-down spectroscopy. In this study it is also tried to

correlate the CRDS and FLRDS techniques and evaluation of different work in respect of chemical sensing and bio chemical sensors.