Robustness of optic-fiber-based weak value amplification against amplitude-type noise

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that weak value amplification implemented on optical fiber platforms remains robust against amplitude-type noise, maintaining high sensitivity even with significant polarization cross talk and misalignment.

Contribution

It provides the first theoretical and experimental validation of the robustness of fiber-based WVA against amplitude noise, facilitating practical optical sensor design.

Findings

WVA in optical fibers is robust against amplitude noise.

Sensitivity loss remains below 3dB with 0.08 rad misalignment.

Results are compatible with simplified detection schemes.

Abstract

Experiments based on free space platform have demonstrated that the weak value amplification (WVA) technique can provide high sensitivity and precision for optical sensing and metrology. To promote this technique for real-world applications, it is more suitable to implement WVA based on optical fiber platform due to the lower cost, smaller scale and higher stability. In contrast to the free space platform, the birefringence in optical fiber is strong enough to cause polarization cross talk, and the amplitude-type noise must be taken into account. By theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration, we show that the optic-fiber-based WVA is robust in presence of amplitude-type noise. In our experiment, even the angular misalignment on optical axes at the interface reaches 0.08rad, the sensitivity loss can be maintained less than 3dB. Moreover, the main results are valid to a simplified detection scheme that recently proposed, which is more compatible with the future design of optical-fiber based WVA. Our results indicate the feasibility of implementing WVA based on optical fiber, which provide a possible way for designing optical sensors with higher sensitivity and stability in the future.