Delay self-heterodyne measurement of narrow linewidth laser frequency drift characteristic

Resonator integrated optic gyro (RIOG), which employs narrow linewidth laser, is a high-accuracy inertial rotation sensor based on the Sagnac effect. The performance of RIOG is greatly affected by the frequency drift of narrow linewidth laser. A simple, effective method to measure the relative frequency drift of narrow linewidth laser based on delayed self-heterodyne technique is proposed in this paper. The measurement range and sensitivity can easily be satisfied by setting the length difference of the fiber segments between two interferometer arms. The relationship between the length difference and the frequency drift is derived based on the given principle of measuring the relative frequency drift. Then the laser frequency drift measuring setup is established and the experiment results demonstrate that a center frequency drift rate is less than 2MHz/6.7s under the room-temperature. Moreover, the measuring setup is applied to test the modulation coefficient of piezoelectric-transducer (PZT), and the modulation coefficient of 9.62MHz/V is obtained, which satisfies the requirements of RIOG closed-loop operation.