Model of a new temperature-compensated optical current sensor using Bi(12)SiO(20).
A new optical bulk current sensor is presented with Bi(12)SiO(20) as a sensing crystal. Through the use of a mirror in the setup and the reciprocity of the optical activity of Bi(12)SiO(20), the sensor becomes insensitive to intrinsic linear birefringence and birefringence that is due to the enclosure of the crystal. Therefore the sensor is also insensitive to temperature, which affects the total linear birefringence. By making a computer model of the Bi(12)SiO(20) sensor, it was proved that the output signal of the sensor, which has a sinusoidal response, has a maximum relative error of 0.05%, apart from the variation of the Verdet constant, for a temperature change of approximately 100 °C.
van den Tempel
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