Patent ID: 8319973

Claim:
An active resonator gyroscope apparatus, comprising: an active ring resonator comprising at least three mirrors wherein at least one of the at least three mirrors comprises a half vertical cavity surface emitting laser operating as an active mirror and the rest the at least three mirrors comprise passive mirrors and wherein energy is supplied to said half vertical cavity surface emitting at such an intensity that said active ring resonator is below its lasing threshold; external light beam 1 at optical frequency f 1 ; external light beam 2 at optical frequency f 2 ; and means to feed light beam 1 and light beam 2 into said active ring resonator to propagate in counter-rotating directions within the active ring resonator; and photo detectors D 1 and D 2 for detecting intensity of the two beams via one or two of the passive mirrors; wherein f 1 and f 2 are locked-in with one or two different resonant frequencies of the active ring resonator using outputs from the photo detector D 1 and D 2 , and rotation rate of the gyroscope is correlated to f 1 -f 2 .