Prospects for enhancement of Ring Laser Gyroscopes using gaseous media.

The most successful Ring Laser Gyroscopes (RLGs) are gas-laser based. It has been recently shown that the type of anomalous dispersion associated with fast light, when present inside an RLG, can increase its scale factor. We evaluate several proposed methods for realizing this appropriate dispersion in gas media, theoretically and experimentally. We find linear gas media in general to be unsuitable for this purpose, with mixed prospects for nonlinear effects.