Solid-state ring laser gyroscope

The ring laser gyroscope is a rotation sensor used in most kinds of inertial navigation units. It usually consists in a ring cavity filled with a mixture of helium and neon, together with high-voltage pumping electrodes. The use of a gaseous gain medium, while resulting naturally in a stable bidirectional regime enabling rotation sensing, is however the main industrially limiting factor for the ring laser gyroscopes in terms of cost, reliability and lifetime. We study in this book the possibility of substituting for the gaseous gain medium a solid-state medium (diode-pumped Nd-YAG). For this, a theoretical and experimental overview of the lasing regimes of the solid-state ring laser is reported. We show that the bidirectional emission can be obtained thanks to a feedback loop acting on the states of polarization and inducing differential losses proportional to the difference of intensity between the counterpropagating modes. This leads to the achievement of a solid-state ring laser gyroscope, whose frequency response is modified by mode coupling effects. Several configurations, either mechanically or optically based, are then successively studied, with a view to improving the quality of this frequency response. In particular, vibration of the gain crystal along the longitudinal axis appears to be a very promising technique for reaching high inertial performances with a solid-state ring laser gyroscope.