Using Ring Laser Systems to Measure Gravitomagnetic Effects on Earth

Gravitomagnetic effects originates from the rotation of the source of the gravitational field and from the rotational features of the observers' frame. In recent years, gravitomagnetism has been tested by means of its impact on the precession of LAGEOS orbits and on the precession of spherical gyroscopes in the GP-B experiment. What we suggest here is that light can be used as a probe to test gravitomagnetic effects in an terrestrial laboratory: the proposed detector consists of large ring-lasers arranged along three orthogonal axes.