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A reflective all-fiber current sensor based on magnetic fluid (MF) is reported. The MF is used as the cladding of a piece of no-core fiber which is spliced between two sections of single-mode fiber to form a singlemode-multimode-singlemode structure. An intensity based interrogation scheme with a superluminescent diode as the light source and the dual-balanced detection method is used in the sensing system. The influence of the direction of the magnetic field on the sensitivity of the sensor is also experimentally investigated and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An actively Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser with a fiber-pigtailed nanosecond ceramic optical switch is experimentally investigated in this paper. Firstly, the ceramic optical switch was systematically characterized. Then, it was used to actively Q-switch an all-fiber erbium-doped fiber ring laser. Stable Q-switching laser pulses with a repetition rate from 2 kHz–40 kHz were achieved. The minimum pulse width was measured to be ~25 ns at 2 kHz when pumped at 150 mW, and the corresponding maximum peak power was ~2.9 W. Multi-peak pulses were observed at low repetition rates and the reasons for these were analyzed. This study shows that a nanosecond ceramic switch can be used as a good Q switch due to its low insertion loss, high on/off ratio, ultrafast response, and low electrical power consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]