High finesse silica waveguide ring resonators for resonant micro-optic gyroscopes

A high-finesse silica waveguide ring resonator (WRR) is designed and a new record is demonstrated experimentally. The finesse and the resonant depth of the silica WRR with a length of 7.9 cm and a diameter of 2.5 cm are 196.7 and 98%, respectively. In addition, the silica WRR is pigtailed with single-polarization fiber to improve the polarization extinction ratio thus to reduce the polarization error. With the application of this high-finesse and high polarization extinction ratio WRR to the resonant micro-optic gyroscope (RMOG), a bias stability of 0.004°/s was observed over a one-hour timeframe.