Title :
Optical Kerr effect in a direction-switched fiber laser gyroscope
Author :
Chang, Sun Hyok ; Ahn, Seong Joon ; Kim, Byoung Yoon
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Phys., Korea Adv. Inst. of Sci. & Technol., Taejon, South Korea
fDate :
10/1/1999 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
The operation of a direction-switched mode-locked fiber laser gyroscope is described. We observed a large bias in the beat frequency output, and found that it was caused by the optical Kerr effect when the two counterpropagating pulses in the laser cavity have different optical powers. The beat frequency bias was 65 Hz per 1 mW of power difference when the scale factor of the gyroscope was 0.43 kHz/(°/s). We found that a small amount of backscattering in the laser cavity could result in random fluctuations in the beat frequency. It is shown that the random frequency noise can be suppressed efficiently by applying push-pull phase modulation in the laser cavity
Keywords :
backscatter; erbium; fibre lasers; fibre optic gyroscopes; fluctuations; laser beams; laser cavity resonators; laser mode locking; laser noise; optical Kerr effect; optical modulation; optical switches; phase modulation; ring lasers; 1 mW; 65 Hz; Er-doped fiber laser gyroscope; backscattering; beat frequency; beat frequency bias; beat frequency output; bias; counterpropagating pulses; direction-switched fiber laser gyroscope; direction-switched mode-locked fiber laser gyroscope; laser cavity; mode-locked fiber laser gyroscope; optical Kerr effect; optical powers; power difference; push-pull phase modulation; random fluctuations; random frequency noise; scale factor; Backscatter; Fiber lasers; Frequency; Gyroscopes; Kerr effect; Laser mode locking; Laser noise; Nonlinear optics; Optical pulses; Power lasers;
Journal_Title :
Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of
