Small scale ring laser gyroscopes as environmental monitors

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series Vol. 1468; no. 1; pp. 12220 - 12223
• Main Authors: Bosi, Filippo, Di Virgilio, Angela D. V., Giacomelli, Umberto, Simonelli, Andrea, Terreni, Giuseppe, Basti, Andrea, Beverini, Nicolò, Carelli, Giorgio, Ciampini, Donatella, Fuso, Francesco, Maccioni, Enrico, Marsili, Paolo, Stefani, Fabio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 01.02.2020
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/1468/1/012220

Inertial sensors are of interest for many different applications, and at present ring laser gyros with area larger than one square meter are the most sensitive ones; a few ring lasers with area between 15 and 72 square meters are operative with sensitivity of the order of tens of prad/s in 1 second measurement and high duty cycle. Smaller scale rings are severely limited by the back-scattering induced coupling between the counter-propagating beams, that in presence of just the angular rotation velocity vector of the Earth, eventually lock together the two frequencies making the device blind. The problem is usually overcome by increasing the frequency distance between the two modes, i.e. increasing the size of the ring. Even when the RLG is large enough and the two modes are not locked, back-scattering affects the signal. However, this is not a fundamental limit, and we have recently shown that it can be analytically solved. In this paper the sensitivity of a ring laser with a square side of 1 m will be discussed.