8 research outputs found
Direct measurement of diurnal polar motion by ring laser gyroscopes
We report the first direct measurements of the very small effect of forced
diurnal polar motion, successfully observed on three of our large ring lasers,
which now measure the instantaneous direction of Earth's rotation axis to a
precision of 1 part in 10^8 when averaged over a time interval of several
hours. Ring laser gyroscopes provide a new viable technique for directly and
continuously measuring the position of the instantaneous rotation axis of the
Earth and the amplitudes of the Oppolzer modes. In contrast, the space geodetic
techniques (VLBI, SLR, GPS, etc.) contain no information about the position of
the instantaneous axis of rotation of the Earth, but are sensitive to the
complete transformation matrix between the Earth-fixed and inertial reference
frame. Further improvements of gyroscopes will provide a powerful new tool for
studying the Earth's interior.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, agu2001.cl
A Large Area Fiber Optic Gyroscope on multiplexed fiber network
We describe a fiber optical gyroscope based on the Sagnac effect realized on a multiplexed telecom fiber network. Our loop encloses an area of 20 km2 and coexists with Internet data traffic. This Sagnac interferometer achieves a sensitivity of about (10-8 rad/s)/sqrt(Hz), thus approaching ring laser gyroscopes without using narrow linewidth laser nor sophisticated optics. The proposed gyroscope is sensitive enough for seismic applications, opening new possibilities for this kind of optical fiber sensors
Horizontal rotation signals detected by "G-Pisa" ring laser for the Mw=9.0, March 2011, Japan earthquake
We report the observation of the ground rotation induced by the Mw=9.0, 11th
of March 2011, Japan earthquake. The rotation measurements have been conducted
with a ring laser gyroscope operating in a vertical plane, thus detecting
rotations around the horizontal axis. Comparison of ground rotations with
vertical accelerations from a co-located force-balance accelerometer shows
excellent ring laser coupling at periods longer than 100s. Under the plane wave
assumption, we derive a theoretical relationship between horizontal rotation
and vertical acceleration for Rayleigh waves. Due to the oblique mounting of
the gyroscope with respect to the wave direction-of-arrival, apparent
velocities derived from the acceleration / rotation rate ratio are expected to
be always larger than, or equal to the true wave propagation velocity. This
hypothesis is confirmed through comparison with fundamental-mode, Rayleigh wave
phase velocities predicted for a standard Earth model.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Seismolog