Ring laser gyroscope

About: Ring laser gyroscope is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2070 publications have been published within this topic receiving 18609 citations. The topic is also known as: Sagnac interferometer.

Picosecond-pulsed diode ring laser gyroscope

Abstract: An external ring cavity containing as its active medium a pair of InGaAsP diodes is modelocked to produce picosecond pulses. In such a laser, a small frequency difference proportional to the nonreciprocal phase shift (resulting from, e.g., the Sagnac effect) can be observed by beating together the counterpropagating laser arms; the device therefore acts as a rotation sensor. In contrast to a conventional (cw) ring laser gyroscope, the pulsed gyroscope can avoid gain competition, thereby enabling the use of homogeneously broadened gain media like semiconductor diodes. Temporal separation of the pulses within the cavity also discriminates against frequency locking of the lasers. The picosecond pulsed diode ring laser gyroscope is reviewed. Both active and passive modelocking are discussed.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Optical fiber laser gyroscope

Abstract: PURPOSE:To simplify the constitution, by splitting light from a linearly polarized light source by a semitransparent mirror made of a thin metal film, which is arranged at a specified angle, inputting the light beams into both end surfaces of an optical fiber, making the reflected light beams interface through the semitransparent mirror, and giving the phase difference of 90 deg CONSTITUTION:Incident light (b) from a semiconductor laser 1 for linearly polarized light is split into a reflected light beam b1 and a transmitted light beam b2 by a semitransparent mirror 5 made of a thin metal film Both light beams b1 and b2 are inputted to both end surfaces of an optical fiber 6 having polarization-plane maintaining characteristic The output light beams b'1 and b'2 are inputted to the mirror 5 again The obtained interference light beam b3 is received by a light receiving element 4, and an angular velocity of rotation OMEGA is obtained At this time, the incident angle of the light (b) to the mirror 5 and the reflecting angle phi are made to be set at 75 deg The phase delay after the reflections of two times is made to be 90 deg The phase delay after the transmissions of two times is made to be 0 The phase difference of the light beam b3 is made to be 90 deg Thus the sensitivity when the angular velocity is 0 is made maximum, and conventional constituent elements to be added can be omitted

Device for assembling light-splitting optical elements of laser gyroscope

Abstract: The invention relates to a device for assembling light-splitting optical elements of a laser gyroscope The device comprises an optical platform, a vibration reduction platform, four cylindrical supports, a light-splitter-prism parallel-connection fine adjustment mechanism, a phototube adjusting mechanism, a laser-gyroscope resonant cavity positioning mechanism and the light-splitting assembling to-be-assembled optical elements of the laser gyroscope The vibration reduction platform is fixed to the optical platform The light-splitter-prism parallel-connection fine adjustment mechanism is fixed to the vibration reduction platform and used for completing clamping and posture adjusting of the light splitter prism of the light-splitting assembling to-be-assembled optical elements of the laser gyroscope The phototube adjusting mechanism is fixed to the vibration reduction platform through the four cylindrical supports and used for completing clamping and posture adjusting of the first phototube and the second phototube of the light-splitting assembling to-be-assembled optical elements of the laser gyroscope The laser-gyroscope resonant cavity positioning mechanism is fixed to the optical platform and used for clamping and positioning the resonant cavity of the light-splitting assembling to-be-assembled optical elements of the laser gyroscope

Fundamental characteristics of semiconductor ring laser gyroscopes

Abstract: Semiconductor ring lasers have many capabilities of realizing new functional devices. In this paper, we propose a novel optical inertial rotation sensor using a semiconductor ring laser. If a semiconductor ring laser operates as an optical inertial rotation sensor, a very small and simple optical gyroscope can be realized. To our knowledge this is the first demonstration of a semiconductor ring laser gyroscope (S-RLG). Experimental results are as follows. (1) The Sagnac frequency shift can be detected as a beat note by the terminal voltage change of the semiconductor ring laser without branching the circulating optical power. Therefore, the S-RLG system can be constructed very simply as compared with already proposed optical gyroscopes. (2) The detected beat frequency between two counterpropagating lasers in the S-RLG is directly proportional to the applied rotation rate. (3) Furthermore, we present data demonstrating the injection locking phenomenon around low rotation rate. These results verify that the proposed S-RLG operates as an optical inertial rotation sensor based on the Sagnac effect. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 132(4): 73–78, 2000

Analyzing phase-amplitude coupling effects on the dynamics of semiconductor ring laser gyroscope

Abstract: The effects of phase-amplitude interactions on the linearity of semiconductor ring laser gyro output is evaluated. Response of gyro output to the variations in several semiconductor gain medium parameters is studied with a view of performance enhancement through parameter optimization.