Off course, yes, provided that the gain from SOA is higher than the total loss from the rest of the ring resonator.

However, it would not work well as a ring laser gyroscope because there will be a gain competition between CW & CCW lasing waves.

For the ring laser gyroscope based on HeNe laser, we do not have this gain competition issue because, it turns out, that CW and CCW waves see gains from different subsets of atoms because the gain is doppler-broadened (the gain center is slightly shifted from stationary atom due to the doppler effect). 

Unless you come up with a feasible scheme to solve this gain competition issue in SOA ring laser, I am afraid your project is ill-fated.

Hi Ken,

Thanks for your reply. Could you please suggest some method to avoid gain competition in SOA based RLG?

Although I am not a gyro expert, I am not entirely sure this gain competition is fundamental. SOA based ring lasers operate bidirectionally over large operating regimes. I can imagine that the wavelength shift in a gyro might mess up this picture, so I'd be interested too to hear more about the impossibility of the SOA-based gyro.

Some kind of setup using a Faraday isolator (I'm quite sure they are available in pigtailed configurations) should be able to allow one to eliminate either the CW or CCW wave.

At least if you use a polarization maintaining fiber.

I do not know any way to avoid the gain competition in SOA-based ring laser. It seems fundamental to me. If this is your research topic, you are the one who needs to come up with novel schemes to make things work....

Hi Ken Toyama

Thank you for your help.