On the potential of large ring lasers

We describe a new ring laser with area A = 833 m2 and update performance statistics for several such machines. Chaio and Anandan [R.Y. Chaio, J. Anandan, Gen. Relat. Gravit. 14 (1982) 515–521] judged ring lasers inferior to matter interferometers as possible detectors of gravitational waves. However, we note that geophysically interesting results have been obtained from large ring lasers and that there is still a lot of room for improvements.