Improving long-term temperature bias stability of an integrated optical gyroscope employing a Si3N4 resonator

Abstract

The presence of polarization noise generated by the waveguide resonator limits the performance of a resonant integrated optical gyroscope (RIOG). Using silicon nitride ( Si 3 N 4 ) to fabricate a waveguide with an ultralow-aspect-ratio can result in a resonator that only supports light transmission in a single-polarization state, suppressing polarization noise. We successfully fabricated a Si 3 N 4 resonator with a bending radius of 17.5 mm, a finesse ( F ) of 150, a quality factor ( Q ) of 1.54 × 10 7 , and a propagation loss of 1.2 dB/m. The Si 3 N 4 resonator was used to construct a double closed-loop RIOG that showed long-term bias stability (3600 s) of 13.2°/h at room temperature, 14.8°/h at 40°C, 21.2°/h at 50°C, and 23.6°/h at 60°C. We believe this to be the best performance reported to date for a Si 3 N 4 resonator-based RIOG. This advancement paves the way for the wider application of RIOGs.