Analysis of ring laser gyroscopes including laser dynamics

Abstract

Inertial sensors are important at application level and also in fundamental physics. Ring laser gyroscopes, which measure angular rotation rates, are among the most sensitive ones. Large area ring laser reach sensitivities at the level of fractions of prad/s, allowing measurements of relevant geophysical signals. Improvements of a factor 10–100 would make these instruments able to measure general relativity effects; this is the goal e.g. of the GINGER project, an Earth based experiment aiming to test the Lense–Thirring effect with an accuracy of 1%. However, the laser induces non-linearities, effects larger in small scale instruments. We discuss a novel technique to analyse data, able to reduce non-linear laser effects. We apply this technique to data from two ring laser prototypes, and compare the precision of the measurement of the angular rotation rate obtained with the new and the standard methods. We show that the back-scatter problem of the ring laser gyroscopes is negligible with a proper analysis of the data. These results not only allow to improve the performance of large scale ring laser gyroscopes but also pave the way to the development of small scale instruments with nrad/s sensitivity, which are precious for environmental studies and as inertial platforms.