The titanium:sapphire ring laser gyroscope

This dissertation studied the Ti:sapphire laser as a pulsed ring laser gyroscope. Several new cavity designs were demonstrated, including a saturable absorber mode-locked laser gyroscope, a linear cavity laser, a Kerr-lens mode-locked femtosecond laser gyroscope, and a solid-state mutual Kerr-lens mode-locked ring gyroscope.; A solid-state ring laser gyroscope using a dye-jet saturable absorber was studied for the first time. This laser produced the lowest beat frequencies recorded in a pulsed laser (10 Hz with a 10 Hz bandwidth) and also the narrowest beat note bandwidth at 0.85 Hz. This low beat frequency bandwidth corresponds to a nonreciprocal change in optical path length of {dollar}7times 10sp{lcub}-15{rcub}{dollar} meters. A sensitive technique to measure the intensity dependent refractive index, {dollar}rm nsb2,{dollar} was developed using this laser. Null-bias dithering was demonstrated for the first time using an electro-optic modulator. A new method of extracting the average beat frequency from a dithered laser was discovered and the experimental result was verified with an analytic solution.; A novel linear cavity with two pulses in the cavity was used for the first time to measure electro-optic coefficients. This laser can be analyzed as an extremely elongated ring laser with the difference being that the pulses are indistinguishable which implies no bias beat frequency.; Kerr-lens mode-locking was demonstrated for the first time in a ring laser gyroscope. This laser employed both passive negative and positive feedback in the same Kerr element. Both continuous wave operation and Q-switched mode-locked operation were demonstrated without lock-in. A novel method of stabilizing the crossing point in a ring laser was demonstrated by using mutual Kerr-lens mode-locking which resulted in a bidirectional, solid-state ring laser. Finally a bidirectional OPO ring gyroscope was designed. The OPO ring gyroscope solves many of the problems of a solid-state ring including, gain competition, lock-in and bias.