Rotation Sensing Lasers in General Relativity: Some Technical Notes and Current Advances

Abstract

We review the current status of large ring laser gyroscopes having the potential to contributeto terrestrial measurements of general relativistic precessions. At this point in time, although thesedevices possess the raw sensitivity for such a measurement, they remain limited by long-term geometricinstability, detection noise and imperfections in the physical models required to isolate geophysicaleffects. Furthermore, minute non-reciprocal biases provide a null-shift error and therefore no currentlyconstructed laser system meets the requirement of absolute rotation rate sensing. Nevertheless, we are ofthe view that these are surmountable problems and the ability of ring laser gyroscopes to measure lowfrequency to DC signals has vastly increased in the last decade.

Keywords

• Sagnac interferometry
• ring laser gyroscopes
• earth rotation sensing