A large scale passive laser gyroscope for Earth rotation sensing

Abstract

Earth rotation sensing has many applications in different disciplines, such as for the monitoring of ground motions, the establishment of UT1 and the test of the relativistic Lense-Thirring effect on the ground. We report the development of a 1 m*1 m heterolithic passive resonant gyroscope (PRG). By locking a pair of laser beams to adjacent modes of the square ring cavity in the clockwise and counter-clockwise directions, we achieve a rotation resolution of about 2E-9 rad/s at an integration time of 1000 s. The sensitivity of the PRG for rotations reaches a level of 2E-9 rad/s/rtHz in the 5-100~Hz region, currently limited by the detection noise, residual amplitude modulation and the mechanical instability of the cavity. Our initial results improve the reported rotation sensitivity of the PRGs and indicate that PRGs have a great potential for high-resolution Earth rotation sensing.

References in corpus (9)

• TianQin: a space-borne gravitational wave detector
• Measuring Gravito-magnetic Effects by Multi Ring-Laser Gyroscope
• Testing general relativity by means of ringlasers
• A ring-lasers array for fundamental physics
• A Large Area Fiber Optic Gyroscope on multiplexed fiber network
• Thermal noise limited higher-order mode locking of a reference cavity
• Passive, free-space laser gyroscope
• Compensation of the laser parameters fluctuations in large ring laser gyros: a Kalman filter approach
• Suppression of residual amplitude modulation effect in the Pound-Drever-Hall locking

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Reaching the sensitivity limit of a Sagnac gyroscope through linear regression analysis
• A high sensitivity tool for geophysical applications: A geometrically locked Ring Laser Gyroscope
• Overcoming 1 part in $10^9$ of Earth angular rotation rate measurement with the G Wettzell data
• Effects of mixing and annealing on the optical and mechanical properties of TiO${}_2$:Ta${}_2$O${}_5$ amorphous coatings
• 3 m$\times$3 m heterolithic passive resonant gyroscope with cavity length stabilization
• Stabilizing the free spectral range of a large ring laser
• A table-top high-sensitivity gyroscope based on slow light and cavity enhanced photon drag
• Hänsch-Couillaud locking of a large Sagnac interferometer: advancing below the flicker floor
• New method for residual amplitude modulation control in fibered optical experiments