3 m$\times$3 m heterolithic passive resonant gyroscope with cavity length stabilization

Abstract

Large-scale high sensitivity laser gyroscopes have important applications for ground-based and space-based gravitational wave detection. We report on the development of a 3 m$\times$3 m heterolithic passive resonant gyroscope (HUST-1) which is installed on the ground of a cave laboratory. We operate the HUST-1 on different longitudinal cavity modes and the rotation sensitivity reaches $1.6\times 10^{-9}$ rad/s/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ beyond 1 Hz. The drift of the cavity length is one of the major sensitivity limits for our gyroscope in the low frequency regime. By locking cavity length to an ultra-stable reference laser, we achieve a fractional cavity length stability of $5.6\times 10^{-9}$ m$/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ at 0.1 mHz, a four orders of magnitude improvement over the unconstrained cavity in the low frequency regime. We stabilize the cavity length of a large-scale heterolithic passive resonant gyroscope through active feedback and realize long-term operation. The rotation sensitivity reaches $1.7\times 10^{-7}$ rad/s/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ at 0.1 mHz, a three orders of magnitude improvement, which is no longer limited by the cavity length drift in this frequency range.