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arXiv:0901.1819 · Physical Review Letters

Noise-Immune Conjugate Large-Area Atom Interferometers

Sheng‐wey Chiow, Sven Herrmann, Steven Chu, Holger Müller

Published Jul 28, 2009• 69 citations
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Abstract

We present a pair of simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bordé atom interferometers using large (20variant Planck's over 2pik)-momentum transfer beam splitters, where variant Planck's over 2pik is the photon momentum. Simultaneous operation allows for common-mode rejection of vibrational noise. This allows us to surpass the enclosed space-time area of previous interferometers with a splitting of 20variant Planck's over 2pik by a factor of 2500. Using a splitting of 10variant Planck's over 2pik, we demonstrate a 3.4 ppb resolution in the measurement of the fine structure constant. Examples for applications in tests of fundamental laws of physics are given.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.103.050402

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•Jan 1, 2013•0 citations
We present a pair of simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bordé atom interferometers using large (20variant Planck's over 2pik)-momentum transfer beam splitters, where variant Planck's over 2pik is the photon momentum. Simultaneous operation allows for common-mode rejection of vibrational noise. This allows us to surpass the enclosed space-time area of previous interferometers with a splitting of 20variant Planck's over 2pik by a factor of 2500. Using a splitting of 10variant Planck's over 2pik, we demonstrate a 3.4 ppb resolution in the measurement of the fine structure constant. Examples for applications in tests of fundamental laws of physics are given.
Bloch oscillations (i.e., coherent acceleration of matter waves by an optical lattice) and Bragg diffraction are integrated into light-pulse atom interferometers with large momentum splitting between the interferometer arms, and hence enhanced sensitivity. Simultaneous acceleration of both arms in the same internal states suppresses systematic effects, and simultaneously running a pair of interferometers suppresses the effect of vibrations. Ramsey-Bordé interferometers using four such Bloch-Bragg-Bloch beam splitters exhibit 15% contrast at 24variant Planck's over 2pik splitting, the largest so far (variant Planck's over 2pik is the photon momentum); single beam splitters achieve 88variant Planck's over 2pik. The prospects for reaching 100 s of variant Planck's over 2pik and applications such as gravitational wave sensors are discussed.
We report on our experiment to measure h/M, the ratio of the Planck constant to the mass of Cs atoms, and thereby the fine‐structure constant. The target accuracy is 1 part per billion or better. We focus on two recent milestones: (i) The first realization of atom interferometers based on light‐pulse beam splitters that transfer the momentum of up to 12 photon pairs, which increases the useful signal (matter wave phase shift) by a factor of 144 compared to the beam splitters used in the best present atom interferometers. Moreover, they lead to a cancellation of important systematic effects. (ii) The first realization of a simultaneous pair of conjugate Ramsey‐Bordé interferometers. In these, the relative sign of the inertial term is reversed so that it can be cancelled. Simultaneous operation means that this holds for a time‐dependent inertial term (vibrations) too, which promises a substantial improvement in the signal to noise ratio.
We demonstrate atom interferometers utilizing a novel beam splitter based on sequential multiphoton Bragg diffractions. With this sequential Bragg large momentum transfer (SB-LMT) beam splitter, we achieve high contrast atom interferometers with momentum splittings of up to 102 photon recoil momenta (102ℏk). To our knowledge, this is the highest momentum splitting achieved in any atom interferometer, advancing the state-of-the-art by an order of magnitude. We also demonstrate strong noise correlation between two simultaneous SB-LMT interferometers, which alleviates the need for ultralow noise lasers and ultrastable inertial environments in some future applications. Our method is intrinsically scalable and can be used to dramatically increase the sensitivity of atom interferometers in a wide range of applications, including inertial sensing, measuring the fine structure constant, and detecting gravitational waves.
We experimentally and theoretically study Bragg diffraction as a tool for large-momentum transfer beam splitters in atom interferometry. A theoretical framework is developed to quantify the diffraction phase systematic caused by Bragg diffraction and experiments are performed to confirm these predictions using a Ramsey-Bord\\'e atom interferometer. We then develop methods to systematically cancel and reduce the diffraction phase systematic by carefully selecting Bragg diffraction parameters and utilizing Bloch oscillations. These techniques are then applied to an ongoing precision measurement of $h/m_\\text{Cs}$ for cesium, with the end goal of measuring the fine structure constant alpha\\alphaalpha. We demonstrate a high contrast simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bord\\'e interferometer using 5th order Bragg diffraction and 25 common mode Bloch oscillations which achieves 2.5times1062.5\\times 10^62.5times106 radians of phase. We also demonstrate an interferometer with a statistical uncertainty of deltaalpha/alpha=0.25\\delta \\alpha/\\alpha=0.25deltaalpha/alpha=0.25 ppb after 25 hours of integration time that has diffraction phase systematic error of around 1 ppb. Other sources of systematic uncertainty are also thoroughly explored and determined to better than 0.1 ppb. The techniques and theories developed in this thesis will hopefully help enable future precision measurements based on Bragg diffraction.
Light-pulse atom interferometers have been used as quantum inertial sensors and for precision tests of fundamental laws of physics. For higher contrast, we apply conjugate Ramsey-Borde interferometers to cancel out vibrational noise and top mirror tilting to compensate the Coriolis force. For higher sensitivity, we implement Bragg diffraction and Bloch oscillations for large momentum transfer to increase the enclosed area of our atom interferometer. We also utilize Raman sideband cooling in our experimental setup, which increases the overall signal about twentyfold, and increases the contrast by suppressing the thermal expansion of the atom cloud.By combining measurements of recoil frequency and a frequency comb, we present the first clock referenced to the mass of a single particle. The rest mass of a particle defines its Compton frequency, mc^2/h through relativity and quantum mechanics, and thereby sets a fundamental timescale. Our clock stabilizes a 10 MHz radio frequency signal to a certain fraction of the cesium Compton frequency. Future work could result in an elementary particle (electron) or even antimatter (antihydrogen) clock, opening up new ways to test CPT symmetry and the equivalence principle. We also present our progress towards a new determination of the fine structure constant. The fine structure constant value obtained by our cesium Compton clock measurement is about three times better compared with the earlier cesium recoil frequency result. After combining Bragg diffraction and Bloch oscillations, we achieved 0.33 ppb sensitivity (0.66 ppb uncertainty of the recoil frequency measurement) in 6 hours, which is about two times better than the previous best recoil frequency measurement. The leading systematic effect is also reduced by a factor of 2.75.