Practical Rings
Figure 2 shows a practical gas laser gyro of the type that is used in vehicles.
Ring lasers are sometimes modified to allow only one direction of propagation by placing a device into the ring which leads to different losses for different propagation directions. For instance, this could be a Faraday rotator combined with a polarizing element.
One type of ring laser design is a single crystal design, where light reflects around inside the laser crystal so as to circulate in a ring. This is the "monolithic crystal" design, and such devices are known as "non-planar ring oscillators" (NPROs) or MISERs. There are also ring fiber lasers.
Semiconductor ring lasers have potential applications in all-optical computing. One primary application is as an optical memory device where the direction of propagation represents either 0 or 1. They can maintain the propagation of light in exclusively the clockwise or counterclockwise direction as long as they remain powered.
Read more about this topic: Ring Laser
Famous quotes containing the words practical and/or rings:
“And so we ask for peace for the gods of our fathers, for the gods of our native land. It is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the same. We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us. What does it matter what practical systems we adopt in our search for the truth. Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.”
—Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (A.D. c. 340–402)
“You held my hand
and were instant to explain
the three rings of danger.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)