Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Terms of Use
© 2024 Aiden Tomov, Paige Poteet. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Engineering Department
First Advisor
Lynne Molter
Abstract
This project demonstrates an optical approach to magnetic field detection. Operating as an adapted Mach-Zender interferometer, the apparatus begins by splitting an infrared beam of light into two separate paths, each with 50% of the overall power. These paths are segments of single-mode photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and are of equal lengths. One of the PCF paths has its air holes infused with EMG 700 ferrofluid which, by nature of ferrofluids, has a tunable refractive index (RI). The beams are recombined and shone into a power meter for analysis. When the ferrofluid-infused path encounters a magnetic field, the RI within the fiber changes due to the presence of EMG 700, thereby causing a change in the effective travel distance for the mode of light. Thus, when the beams reunite, there will be interference. Depending on the strength of the magnetic field, the magnitude of the interference will change accordingly, resulting in a detectable relationship between the power of the emergent light and magnetic field strength.
Recommended Citation
Tomov, Aiden , '24 and Poteet, Paige , '24, "Optical Fiber Magnetic Field Detector" (2024). Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards. 907.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/theses/907