dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaDirect measurement of diurnal polar motion by ring laser gyroscopes
| Authors | K. U. Schreiber, A. Velikoseltsev, M. Rothacher, T. Klugel, G. E. Stedman, D. L. Wiltshire |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0406156 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0406156 |
| DOI | 10.1029/2003JB002803 |
| Journal | J.Geophys.Res. 109 (2004) B06405 |
Abstract
We report the first direct measurements of the very small effect of forced diurnal polar motion, successfully observed on three of our large ring lasers, which now measure the instantaneous direction of Earth's rotation axis to a precision of 1 part in 10^8 when averaged over a time interval of several hours. Ring laser gyroscopes provide a new viable technique for directly and continuously measuring the position of the instantaneous rotation axis of the Earth and the amplitudes of the Oppolzer modes. In contrast, the space geodetic techniques (VLBI, SLR, GPS, etc.) contain no information about the position of the instantaneous axis of rotation of the Earth, but are sensitive to the complete transformation matrix between the Earth-fixed and inertial reference frame. Further improvements of gyroscopes will provide a powerful new tool for studying the Earth's interior.
{
"annotation_id": "87700259-6ff0-4e9e-b6fe-cb1002ced2cf",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:00:49.527000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:00:49.527000Z",
"file_hash": "ba95e5382b3977d11c33bf04a119b7f7c9b4ac27c93ef64eb7a188cdda0a2c5d",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "We report the first direct measurements of the very small effect of forced\ndiurnal polar motion, successfully observed on three of our large ring lasers,\nwhich now measure the instantaneous direction of Earth\u0027s rotation axis to a\nprecision of 1 part in 10^8 when averaged over a time interval of several\nhours. Ring laser gyroscopes provide a new viable technique for directly and\ncontinuously measuring the position of the instantaneous rotation axis of the\nEarth and the amplitudes of the Oppolzer modes. In contrast, the space geodetic\ntechniques (VLBI, SLR, GPS, etc.) contain no information about the position of\nthe instantaneous axis of rotation of the Earth, but are sensitive to the\ncomplete transformation matrix between the Earth-fixed and inertial reference\nframe. Further improvements of gyroscopes will provide a powerful new tool for\nstudying the Earth\u0027s interior.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0406156",
"authors": [
"K. U. Schreiber",
"A. Velikoseltsev",
"M. Rothacher",
"T. Klugel",
"G. E. Stedman",
"D. L. Wiltshire"
],
"categories": [
"physics.geo-ph",
"astro-ph",
"gr-qc",
"physics.space-ph"
],
"doi": "10.1029/2003JB002803",
"journal_ref": "J.Geophys.Res. 109 (2004) B06405",
"title": "Direct measurement of diurnal polar motion by ring laser gyroscopes",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0406156"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "582e2194-1ee7-44f5-98bc-0c3c7afdf382",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}