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Optical fibre musical instruments: making sense of the senseless

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Abstract

This paper demonstrates how the light transmitted through a stretched optical fibre may be used to detect its modes of vibration. In particular, replacing strings of a musical instrument with optical fibre allows the fabrication of a simple acoustic instrument with a single laser source and single detector. The detected signal contains rich harmonics of the vibrating fibre. This device may be used as a vibration, temperature or strain sensor, or simply as a musical instrument. Coating the optical fibre with novel materials such as PZLT may well allow a modification of vibration properties to enhance, suppress certain harmonics or lead to the development of simple electric field sensors.

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Acknowledgements

Canada Research Chairs program of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada is acknowledged by RK for research support and Hannah Kashyap is acknowledged for inspiration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, School of Engineering of the University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada, H3C 3A7

    Isabelle Christiane Fotsing-Djouwe, Jean-Jacques Laurin & Raman Kashyap

  2. Department of Applied Physics, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, School of Engineering of the University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada, H3C 3A7

    Mathieu Gagné & Raman Kashyap

Authors
  1. Isabelle Christiane Fotsing-Djouwe
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  2. Mathieu Gagné
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  3. Jean-Jacques Laurin
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  4. Raman Kashyap
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Correspondence to Raman Kashyap.

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Fotsing-Djouwe, I.C., Gagné, M., Laurin, JJ. et al. Optical fibre musical instruments: making sense of the senseless. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 20 (Suppl 1), 170–174 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-007-9499-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-007-9499-7

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