Photonic RF readout of refractive index sensing by terahertz-region beat detection with frequency multiplication and active-dummy temperature compensation.

We present a unified refractive index (RI) sensing platform that integrates THz-comb-based frequency multiplication with dual-comb active-dummy temperature compensation. In conventional RI-sensing optical frequency combs (OFCs), sensitivity, stability, and measurement speed are fundamentally coupled, limiting overall performance. In the proposed system, RI-induced shifts in the repetition frequency are amplified in the terahertz domain, while temperature-induced fluctuations are suppressed through common-mode rejection in a dual-comb configuration. Experimental results demonstrate a sensitivity of 5.05 × 107 Hz/RIU, high linearity (R2 = 0.9979), improved resolution (1.07 × 10-4 RIU), and high accuracy (5.50 × 10-5 RIU). The RI-induced frequency shift is expanded from tens of hertz to hundreds of kilohertz, enabling rapid and precise readout with short gate times. This approach overcomes the conventional trade-off between sensitivity and stability. More fundamentally, it establishes orthogonal control of signal scaling and noise suppression as a design principle for high-performance RI sensing.