| Deflection sensors have attracted significant attention due to their wide application in pressure and temperature measurements in practical systems. Several techniques have been proposed, studied, and tested to realize optical deflection sensor elements, including interferometers based on Fabry-Pérot and Mach-Zehnder (MZI).;In this work, a novel optical deflection sensor element comprised of two cascaded optical resonators is proposed and analyzed. The proposed structure is designed to operate in a multi-stable (input to output) regime. As the first resonator is equipped with a movable mirror, connected to a diaphragm in order to sense changes in deflection, the second resonator is filled with non-linear material. It is theoretically demonstrated that such a structure has a novel memory property, aside from having the ability to yield instant deflection measurements. This novel property is attributed to the non-linearity of the medium of the second resonator. Furthermore, the sensor's sensitivity, which is the ratio of the change in the output light intensity to the change in the induced deflection, is shown to be enhanced due to the multi-stable behavior of the proposed cascade optical resonators. This device possesses a promising potential for applications in future smart sensors. |
