Dr Richard Graham
Submitted PhD 2010
Submited/Awarded MSc 2007
PhD Thesis
Design and Optimisation of Ring Laser Gyroscopes" Senior Supervisor Dr Jon-Paul Wells Associate Supervisor: Professor Roger Reeves
Background
Richard as a PhD student worked with the ring laser project.
Richard completed his B.Sc in physics 2004 at the University of Canterbury with a 3rd year project with the ring laser group. In 2005 and 2006 he completed a M.Sc with the ring laser group looking at mapping the distribution of excited states in a Helium-Neon discharge.
His Ph.D research focused on the development of novel techniques for operating these devices. The main aim of these techniques was the enlargement of the available design parameter space for ring laser gyroscopes - allowing both much larger and much smaller devices to be constructed, thus increasing the overall applicability of ring laser gyroscopes to a wide variety of scientific applications. This means investigating techniques to reduce the lock in threshold and associated Adler pulling as well as measuring and correcting for geometric distortions in large laser cavities.
The majority of the experimental work involves the UG-2 ring laser.
Ring Laser Publications
- R.D. Graham, R.B Hurst, R.J Thirkettle, C.H Rowe, P.H Butler. Experiment to Detect Frame Dragging in a Lead Superconductor. In Physica C: Superconductivity and its applications, 468 (5): 383-387, March 2008. BibTeX Preprint (PDF)
- A. Velikoseltsev, K.U. Schreiber, T. Kl¨uge, S. Voigt, R.D. Graham. Sagnac Interferometry for the Determination of Rotations in Geodesy and Seismology. In 15th St. Petersburg International Conference on Integrated Navigation Systems, St. Petersburg, Russia, May 2008. BibTeX Find Article
- R.B. Hurst, G.E. Stedman, K.U. Schreiber, R.J. Thirkettle, R.D. Graham, N. Rabeendran, J.-P. R. Wells. Experiments with a 834 m2 ring laser interferometer. In Journal of Applied Physics, 105 113115, June 2009. BibTeX Find Article
- R.D. Graham. Ring Laser Gain Media. , November 2006. BibTeX Paper (PDF)
- N. Beverini, C. Bradaschia, G. Carelli, A. DiVirgilio, R. Graham, E. Maccioni, A. Porzio, S. Solimeno, F. Sorrentino. G-Pisa gyrolaser. In 5th International Symposium on Modern Problems of Laser Physics, Novosibirsk, Russia, August 2008. BibTeX Find Article