A magnetic field sensor with a magnetic fluid (MF)-coated intermodal interferometer is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The interferometer is formed by sandwiching a segment of single mode fiber (SMF) between a segment of multi-mode fiber (MMF) and a spherical structure. It can be considered as a cascade of the traditional SMF-MMF-SMF structure and MMF-SMF-sphere structure. The transmission spectral characteristics change with the variation of applied magnetic field. The experimental results exhibit that the magnetic field sensitivities for wavelength and transmission loss are 0.047 nm/mT and 0.215 dB/mT for the interference dip around 1 535.36 nm. For the interference dip around 1548.41nm, the sensitivities are 0.077 nm/mT and 0.243 dB/mT. Simultaneous measurement can be realized according to the different spectral responses.

A novel magnetic field sensor based on optical fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) coated by magnetic fluid (MF) is proposed. The MZI consists of two spherical structures formed on standard single mode fiber (SMF). The interference wavelength and the power of the sensing structure are sensitive to the external refractive index (RI). Since RI of the MF is sensitive to the magnetic field, the magnetic field measurement can be realized by detecting the variation of the interference spectrum. Experimental results show that the wavelength and the power of interference dip both increase with the increase of magnetic field intensity.