Abstract

We analyze the effect of the nonlinear Kerr index of refraction and two-photon absorption (TPA) in a rotating silicon microring resonator coupled to waveguides in an add–drop configuration. The nonlinear index of refraction leads to a bifurcation of the intensities of two counterpropagating modes in the nonrotating state. This bifurcation also significantly enhances the intensity difference between these modes due to the Sagnac-induced frequency splitting of the modes in the rotating resonator. Although silicon resonators have a very large Kerr index, they also suffer from large TPA at telecom wavelengths. It is shown that despite TPA, the Kerr nonlinear enhancement to the rotation sensitivity is still of the order of ${10}^4$. An analysis of typical detector noise indicates that a detection limit of $<1\mathrm{deg}/\mathrm{h}$ in a 1.4 mm radius resonator is achievable.

© 2014 Optical Society of America

Nonlinear enhanced microresonator gyroscope

Jonathan M. Silver, Leonardo Del Bino, Michael T. M. Woodley, George N. Ghalanos, Andreas Ø. Svela, Niall Moroney, Shuangyou Zhang, Kenneth T. V. Grattan, and Pascal Del’Haye
Optica 8(9) 1219-1226 (2021)

Nonlinearly enhanced refractive index sensing in coupled optical microresonators

Chao Wang and Christopher P. Search
Opt. Lett. 39(1) 26-29 (2014)

Effect of resonator losses on the sensitivity of coupled resonator optical waveguide gyroscopes

Dmitriy Kalantarov and Christopher P. Search
Opt. Lett. 39(4) 985-988 (2014)

Experimental evidence of enhanced rotation sensing in a slow-light structure

Yundong Zhang, He Tian, Xuenan Zhang, Nan Wang, Jing Zhang, Hao Wu, and Ping Yuan
Opt. Lett. 35(5) 691-693 (2010)

Optical switching using nonlinear polarization rotation inside silicon waveguides

Lianghong Yin, Jidong Zhang, Philippe M. Fauchet, and Govind P. Agrawal
Opt. Lett. 34(4) 476-478 (2009)