Probe-type all-fiber tiny-displacement sensor based on orbital-angular-momentum interferometry.

In this study, a probe-type all-fiber tiny-displacement sensor is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, which is realized by using an all-fiber orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) interferometer, where a probe is especially adopted and inserted into the testing arm of the OAM interferometer. The proposed device takes full advantages of the OAM interferometer and the probe-type fiber sensor, making it completely available to the tiny-displacement measurement. As a result, changes in displacement (ranging from 0 nm to 750 nm) with a real resolution of ∼8.81 nm have been successfully measured. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an all-fiber probe-type OAM interferometer, which may find potential application to high-precision tiny displacement in a small confined space.