NEW YORK: A new spin on optical gyroscope technology could allow the devices, which are crucial to satellite and rocket guidance, to increase in sensitivity while shrinking to about 10 μm in size.
Researchers at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Yale University have demonstrated that far-field emission patterns of light interact strongly with rotating microdisk optical cavities.
This finding presents an alternative to current optical gyroscopes, which are limited by their dependence on the Sagnac effect. This phenomenon creates a measurable interference pattern when light waves split and then recombine upon leaving a spinning system.