Optical Kerr-effect in fiber-optic Brillouin ring laser gyroscopes

Abstract

The optical Kerr effect in a reciprocal fiber-optic Brillouin ring laser gyroscope is investigated. It is found that the Kerr effect, as the major error source of the rotation rate measurement in this gyroscope, causes a bias of beat frequency with nonlinear dependence on rotation rate. A differential Stokes power of 1 mW inside the ring resonator is measured to produce a beat frequency bias of 69 Hz, which agrees well with the theoretical expectation.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>