Fringe Visibility Enhanced Extrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometer Using a Graded Index Fiber Collimator

We report a fringe visibility-enhanced extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer (EFPI) by fusion splicing a quarter-pitch length of a graded-index fiber (GIF) to the lead-in single mode fiber (SMF). The performance of the GIF collimator is theoretically analyzed using a ray matrix model and experimentally verified through beam divergence angle measurements. The fringe visibility of the GIF-collimated EFPI is measured as a function of the cavity length and compared with that of a regular SMF-EFPI. At the cavity length of 500 m, the fringe visibility of the GIF-EFPI is 0.8, while that of the SMF-EFPI is only 0.2. The visibility-enhanced GIF-EFPI may provide a better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for applications where a large dynamic range is desired.