Ultralow shot noise limited giant passive resonant gyroscope for Earth rotation measurement

Abstract

Optical gyroscopes directly measure the Earth's rotation and are promising instruments for real-time geophysical observations and Earth orientation parameter (EOP) determination requiring both high precision and high temporal resolution. Large-scale ring laser gyroscopes (RLGs) currently reach rotational resolutions around $10^{-11}\,\mathrm{(rad/s)/\sqrt{Hz}}$, but their quantum noise limits make it challenging to meet the requirements of future high-temporal-resolution EOP measurements. Passive resonant gyroscopes (PRGs), on the other hand, offer a potentially lower photon shot noise limit and more flexible power scaling, even if their demonstrated rotational resolutions are still about two orders of magnitude below those of leading RLGs. Here we demonstrate a $64\,\mathrm{m^{2}}$ giant passive resonant gyroscope HUST-2, and develop with an extremely low shot noise level. We experimentally obtain a shot noise limited of $5.7(1)\times10^{-13}\,\mathrm{(rad/s)/\sqrt{Hz}}$ at $1\,\mathrm{mW}$ incident optical power, following the characteristic $1/\sqrt{P}$ scaling. Through systematic suppression of dominant technical noise sources, HUST-2 further achieves a measured rotational resolution of $3\times10^{-11}\,\mathrm{(rad/s)/\sqrt{Hz}}$, bringing PRGs into the performance regime of leading large-scale RLGs for the first time. The gap between the present demonstrated rotational resolution and the shot noise limit indicates nearly two orders of magnitude further improvement potential. Reaching this limit would enable high-precision length-of-day (LOD) measurements with $10$-$100\,\mathrm{s}$ temporal resolution and lays the foundation for future large-scale gyroscope networks dedicated to real-time EOP determination.