Novel refractometer using a tapered optical fibre

Using multimode tapered optical fibre a novel fibre-optic refractometer has been proposed. It can measure refractive indices to a high degree of accuracy and requires very little amount of sample for measurements. It is shown that, in principle, this refractometer can be designed to measure any refractive index less than that of the core with a better sensitivity than that of the earlier reported fibre refractometers.