Demonstration of a folded Sagnac sensor array immune to polarization-induced signal fading.

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We demonstrate a new folded Sagnac sensor array design that combines a Faraday rotator mirror and a polarization beam splitter to eliminate the optical noise pulses otherwise generated in a folded Sagnac sensor array. A depolarization scheme compatible with this configuration is also proposed and demonstrated experimentally. It is shown that this new configuration passively eliminates polarization-induced signal fading on every sensor in the array. The minimum detectable phase was measured to be approximately 1.1 microrad/square root of Hz, in agreement with theory.