Principle of Operation

Within this experimental set-up the basics of the fibre laser gyro are explained and practically studied at the system, which allows full access to all components. The experimental laser gyroscope (gyro) consists of a rugged turntable on which the fibre ring laser is mounted. By means of a motorised rotational stage the angular motion of the turntable is performed. The ring laser consist of an Erbium doped Fibre (EDF) and is coiled up onto a drum. The point of rotation lies well within the centre of the drum.
At the accessible space of the ring laser formed by two beam telescopes a thin glass plate decouples the clockwise (cw) and the counter clockwise (CCW) modes of the ring laser. By using a triple reflector also termed corner cube the ccw mode is directed in such a way that the clockwise and counter clockwise travelling modes are superimposed and their interference intensity is detected by means of the InGaAs photo detectors.

By counting the beat frequency and multiplying the result with the scale factor of the set-up one gets the angle motion of the turntable.

The turntable is driven by a micro step motor which is controlled by an extra required personal computer. Different angular speeds as well as cw and ccw rotation are controlled by the provided software.