Fabrication of elliptic microfibers with CO_2 laser for high-sensitivity refractive index sensing

We propose a convenient method for achieving highly birefringent (HiBi) elliptic microfibers by use of the CO2-laser machining and the flame-brushing techniques. With optimization of fabrication process, a high birefringence of up to 2.10×10−2 is experimentally obtained. Especially, within a polarization Sagnac interferometer acting as a refractive index (RI) sensor, both positive and abnormal negative sensitivity is measured, dependent on the geometrical variables of the HiBi microfiber. The maximum RI sensitivity is ∼195,348  nm/RI-unit around RI=1.35887, which is the highest among the microfiber devices as reported, to our knowledge.