Intense Electric-field Sensor for Broad Temperature-range Applications Based on the Electro-optic Interferometer of Bulk Lithium Niobate

Abstract

At present, the optical E-field sensor shows the advantages of large measurement amplitude and wide frequency range, but the weak temperature stability restricts its development and application. For this reason, the influence mechanism on temperature stability of E-field sensors using lithium niobate with the x-axis and z-axis propagation was analyzed in this paper. And the interferometric E-field sensor with the z-axis propagation which is suitable for a broad range of temperatures was proposed. A test platform was constructed to obtain the transfer function parameters of E-field sensor in a wide temperature range. Meanwhile, its basic characteristics was calibrated, including the temperature dependence of the linear measurement range, typical signal response and frequency response. The results show that the calibrated E-field sensor is able to keep stable in the wide temperature range of 0~50℃, and it is capable of measuring an electric fields of frequencies of 10 Hz~700 kHz and intensities of 5~ 600 kV/m, which can provide references for the practical application.