Effect of Static Disorder on Sensitivity of Coupled Resonator Optical Waveguide Gyroscopes

Coupled resonator optical waveguides (CROWs) have shown theoretical promise as microoptical integrated gyroscopes with sensitivities exceeding comparably sized MEMS gyroscopes. Here, we analyze the effect of static disorder on the rotational sensitivity of a CROW gyroscope. Since CROWs consist of a one-dimensional array of evanescently coupled ring-shaped microresonators, disorder includes random variations of the resonator optical path length and couplings between them resulting from manufacturing errors. We show that the rotational sensitivity of the CROW gyro is relatively stable with respect to variations in the interresonator coupling. By contrast, even modest fluctuations in the resonators' roundtrip optical path length result in substantially lower rotational sensitives. Finally, it is shown that while most random configurations of defects reduce the maximum sensitivity, there are particular configurations for which the rotation sensitivity is significantly higher than that of a CROW without disorder.