Singularity-enhanced Coriolis effect

Gyroscopes, as fundamental inertial sensors, are crucial for rotation measurements in the consumer electronics, automotive, and aerospace industries, with the most widely used kind relying on the Coriolis effect. The development of sub-navigation level Coriolis vibratory gyroscopes (CVGs) at the chip-scale remains challenging based on the current understanding, as the weak intrinsic Coriolis factor sets a fundamental limit on scaling the sensitivity. Here, to overcome this physical limit, for the first time, we propose and experimentally demonstrate the use of third-order singularities lying within cusp catastrophes in the phase-tracked oscillations of an on-chip CVG to facilitate a cubic-root scaling of the Coriolis-effect-induced frequency modulation. Employing this effect, we achieve a three-order-of-magnitude enhancement in the Coriolis factor, yielding a 253-fold improvement in signal-to-noise ratio and a 297-fold increase in precision. Moreover, the cusp singularity enables a previously unattainable, ultrasensitive phase-modulated sublinear measurement, achieving a world-record signal-to-noise ratio performance for silicon-based chip-scale gyroscopes. These findings not only provide revolutionary advancements in gyroscope technologies by filling the gap in observing and controlling the singularity-enhanced Coriolis effect, but also shed new light on other ultrasensitive sensing applications.