Mitsuhiro TATEDA^* and Mohan DONG

Graduate School of Advanced Integration Science, Chiba University, Chiba 263-8522, Japan

(Received August 3, 2010; Accepted November 5, 2010)

Fiber Fabry–Perot etalon (FFPE) is a device designed as an optical frequency filter, and its transmission characteristics change depending on force and temperature. In this paper, axial force sensitivity of three types of FFPE is investigated, whose ferrule materials have different Young's modulus. Force sensitivity of an FFPE whose ferrule material is borosilicate glass was found to be 2.7 GHz/N, while those of FFPEs with glass ceramics and zirconium oxide ferrules were 1.7 and 0.8 GHz/N, respectively. Thus, the theoretical expectation is confirmed experimentally that the axial force sensitivity of FFPE is inversely proportional to Young's modulus of the ferrule material.

Key words: fiber Fabry–Perot etalon, transmission frequency, ferrule, force sensitivity, Young's modulus

^*E-mail address: tateda@faculty.chiba-u.jp