Sagnac gyroscope using a two-dimensional array of coupled optical microresonators

Micron-scale-integrated optical gyroscopes based on the Sagnac effect have a broad array of potential applications in navigation and inertial motion sensing due to the benefit of on-chip integration and potential sensitivities exceeding micro-electromechanical gyroscopes. Here, we analyze the Sagnac effect in a two-dimensional array of evanescently coupled optical microring resonators. We show that the sensitivity to inertial rotations greatly exceeds that of a single resonator with equal enclosed area. Moreover, a comparison between two-dimensional arrays and Sagnac gyroscopes consisting of one-dimensional distributed microresonators arrays of equal footprint shows that the sensitivity to rotations of the two-dimensional array exceeds that of the one-dimensional structures by as much as several orders of magnitude for smaller arrays.