New Developments In Fiberoptic Gyroscopes

Fiberoptic inertial rotation sensors (or gyroscopes) so far are based on the Sagnac effect in either a multiturn interferometer1 or a resonator2. Both these approaches constitute the fiberoptic implementation of previously demonstrated Sagnac interferometer3 gyroscopes and resonator4 gyroscopes employing bulkoptic components. However, there has not yet been a fiberoptic analog of the ring laser gyroscope5'6, which has always been a bulk-optic device. In this paper, we present preliminary data on a fiberoptic ring laser gyroscope using stimulated Brillouin7 scattering as the laser gain medium. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a solid state ring laser gyroscope or RLG.