Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1601.02324 · Bulletin of the American Physical Society

Nonlinear Phonon Interferometry at the Heisenberg Limit

Hil Fung Harry Cheung, Yogesh Sharad Patil, Laura J. Chang, Srivatsan Chakram, Mukund Vengalattore

Published Jan 11, 2016• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Interferometers operating at or close to quantum limits of precision have found wide application in tabletop searches for physics beyond the standard model, the study of fundamental forces and symmetries of nature and foundational tests of quantum mechanics. The limits imposed by quantum fluctuations and measurement backaction on conventional interferometers ($δϕ\sim 1/\sqrt{N}$) have spurred the development of schemes to circumvent these limits through quantum interference, multiparticle interactions and entanglement. A prominent example of such schemes, the so-called $SU(1,1)$ interferometer, has been shown to be particularly robust against particle loss and inefficient detection, and has been demonstrated with photons and ultracold atoms. Here, we realize a $SU(1,1)$ interferometer in a fundamentally new platform in which the interfering arms are distinct flexural modes of a millimeter-scale mechanical resonator. We realize up to 15.4(3) dB of noise squeezing and demonstrate the Heisenberg scaling of interferometric sensitivity ($δϕ\sim 1/N$), corresponding to a 6-fold improvement in measurement precision over a conventional interferometer. Our work extends the optomechanical toolbox for the quantum manipulation of macroscopic mechanical motion and presents new avenues for studies of optomechanical sensing and the nonequilibrium dynamics of multimode optomechanical systems.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1601.02324

Related papers

Quantum Measurement of Mechanical Motion close to the Standard Quantum Limit

Liu Qiu

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle places a fundamental limit in the measurement precision for certain pairs of physical quantities, such as position and momentum, time and energy or amplitude and phase. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, any attempt to extract certain information from a quantum object would inevitably perturbitinanunpredictableway. This raises one question,"What is the precision limit in such quantum measurements?" The answer, standard quantum limit (SQL), has been obtained by Braginsky to figure out the fundamental quantum limits of displacement measurement in the context of gravitational wave detection. To circumvent the unavoidable quantum back-action from the priori measurement, quantum non-demolition measurement (QND) methods were introduced by Braginsky and Thorne. To surpass the SQL of the displacement measurement in an interferometer, one can measure only one quadrature of the mechanical motion while give up the information about the other canonically conjugated quadrature. Such measurements can be performed by periodic driving the mechanical oscillator, i.e. the back-action evading (BAE) measurement. Cavity optomechanics provides an ideal table-top platform for the testing of the quantum measurement theory. Mechanical oscillator is coupled to electromagnetic field via radiation pressure, which is enhanced by an optical micro-cavity. Over the last decade, laser cooling has enabled the preparation of mechanical oscillator in the ground state in both optical and microwave systems. BAE measurements of mechanical motion have been allowed in the microwave electromechanical systems, which led to the observations of mechanical squeezing and entanglement. However, despite the theoretical proposal almost 40 years ago, the sub-SQL measurements still remain elusive. This thesis reports our efforts approach the sub-SQL with a highly sideband-resolved silicon optomechanical crystal (OMC) in a 3He buffer gas environment at 2K. The OMC couples an optical mode at telecommunication wavelengths and a colocalized mechanical mode at GHz frequencies. The Helium3 buffer gas environment allows sufficient thermalization of the OMC despite the drastically decreased silicon thermal conductivity. We observe Floquet dynamics in motional sideband asymmetry measurement when employing multiple probe tones. The Floquet dynamics arises due to presence of Kerr-type nonlinearities and gives rise to an artificially modified motional sideband asymmetry, resulting from a synthetic gauge field among the Fourier modes. We demonstrate the first optical continuous two-tone backaction-evading measurement of a localized GHz frequency mechanical mode of silicon OMC close to the ground state by showing the transition from conventional sideband asymmetry to backaction-evading measurement. We discover a fundamental two-tone optomechanical instability and demonstrate its implications on the back-action evading measurement. Such instability imposes a fundamental limitation on other two-tone schemes, such as dissipative quantum mechanical squeezing. We demonstrate state-of-art laser sideband cooling of the mechanical motion to a mean thermal occupancy of 0.09 quantum, which is 7.4dB of the oscillator's zero-point energy and corresponds to 92% ground state probability. This also enables us to observe the dissipative mechanical squeezing below the zero-point motion for the first time with laser light.

•Jan 1, 2020•1 citation

Hybrid quantum sensing using an optomechanical resonator coupled atom interferometer

Ashwin Rajagopalan

Quantum sensing using atom interferometry possesses immense potential for application in gravimetry, inertial navigation and for gravitational wave detection, apart from carrying out tests of fundamental physics. Atom interferometry can be used to perform absolute inertial measurements with unprecedented long term stability, unlike classical sensors which are prone to drift and incur calibration errors. However, atom interferometers seldom achieve their fundamental sensitivity due to the coupling of ambient vibrations. It is the dominant noise source that not only impairs performance but also affects its operability. Ideal compensation of the effects due to vibration noise using a versatile accelerometer, while concurrently enabling miniaturized atom interferometer setups has not been pioneered. Such a compact hybrid quantum sensor will enable reliable operation with an enhanced performance in field applications, paving the way for robust atom interferometry beyond laboratory conditions. A novel optomechanical resonator has been designed, developed and successfully hybridized with an atom interferometer to suppress the effects of vibration noise, and the results are presented in this thesis. The optomechanical resonator’s inertial test mass is simultaneously used to create a continuous intracavity optical lattice to sense its displacement, and a pulsed optical lattice to manipulate the atoms. For the first time, a broadband accelerometer is seamlessly hybridized with an atom interferometer via mechanical resonator mediated coupling of the optical lattices to measure acceleration. This enables elimination of vibration induced measurement ambiguity in our atom interferometer with a well defined mechanical transfer function. Vibration noise correlation is demonstrated up to our prototype atom interferometer’s most sensitive operating mode of T = 6 ms using double Bragg diffraction, ultimately limited by its technical noise. The optomechanical resonator measures acceleration with a sensitivity down to 1.1×10−6 ms−2/ √Hz corresponding to a displacement sensitivity of 8.6 × 10−15 m/ √Hz. Substantial 1/f noise suppression due to the developed optical readout scheme enables a measurement bandwidth spanning from sub-hertz frequencies up to several kilohertz. Multiple versions of the optomechanical resonator with different characteristics were developed and hybridized with our atom interferometer. This paves the way for developing tailored optomechanical resonators for specific inertial sensing applications.

•Jan 1, 2026•0 citations

Harnessing quantum correlations for physics beyond the standard quantum limit in broadband displacement detection

N. S. Kampel, Robert W. Peterson, Ran Fischer +5 more

When one seeks knowledge of the full dynamics of the displacement of a harmonic oscillator, non-commutation of the two mechanical quadratures requires a minimum added noise equal to the mechanical resonator's zero point motion. This fundamental quantum limit (QL) is a distinct bound from the standard quantum limit (SQL) that is often considered in interferometric displacement measurement. The SQL is a consequence of the non-commutation of the probe's quadratures in a specific measurement configuration and is characterized by a tradeoff between shot noise (SN) imprecision and quantum backaction that are uncorrelated. The QL and SQL reach the same limit when probing at the peak mechanical response, but the QL can be a significantly lower bound off resonance. In studies of micro-mechanical motion, there has been great interest in observing quantum backaction and approaching the SQL on mechanical resonance. However, much of what historically motivates SQL research is displacement monitoring over a wide frequency band, such as gravitational wave searches. One long-standing concept for surpassing the SQL is to introduce correlations by changing the readout quadrature as a function of frequency in a technique known as variational readout. Here we harness quantum correlations in the measurement of a macroscopic resonator by modifying the readout quadrature of an optical interferometer. By using an optomechanical device thermalized to a dilution refrigerator, we measure quantum noise far off resonance where we improve upon the off-resonance SQL for our quantum efficiency.

•Jul 22, 2016•2 citations

Entanglement For Atom Interferometers

Alexander Idel

Quantum Sensors, like atom interferometers (AI), can be employed for high-precision measurements of inertial forces, including their application as gravimeters, gradiometers, accelerometers, and gyroscopes. Their measurement principle relies on ultracold atoms that are prepared in quantum-mechanical superposition states in external degrees of freedom. These states can be prepared by a momentum transfer of a Raman laser. Then the superposition state senses the effect of an inertial force, which induce a corresponding relative phase. The phase is read out by a final coupling which converts the interferometric phase into a atom number difference between the two states. The difference provides an estimate of the interferometric phase and the corresponding quantity of interest. The quantum mechanical noise of the atomic ensemble cause a fundamental uncertainty of this estimation, which I analyze for generic AIs. For small atomic densities, the quantum phase noise of the ensemble limits the interferometric sensitivity. For large densities, quantum number fluctuations generate density fluctuations, which generates phase noise. I show that these two competing effects result in an optimal atom number with a maximal interferometer resolution. Squeezed atomic samples allow for a reduction of the quantum noise of one quantity at the expense of an increased noise along of a conjugate quantity. Phase and number are such quantities which obey to a variant of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Neither phase nor number squeezing can improve the maximal interferometer resolution. As one main result of this thesis, I show how an optimal squeezing in between number and phase squeezing, allows for a fundamental improvement. I evaluate possible experimental paths to implement the proposed protocol. Concepts for a squeezing-enhanced operation of external-degree AIs have not yet been demonstrated. I propose and implement an atomic gravimeter, which is designed to accept spin-squeezed atomic states as input states. The interferometer is designed such that the interferometer couplings are performed in spin space, while the phase accumulation is performed in momentum states. For this interferometer, the squeezed input can be directly obtained from spin dynamics in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. The main noise contributions in the experiment are analyzed, which results in a factor of 84 above the relevant quantum limit, preventing a squeezing enhancement so far. I outline a suppression of the main noise source, uncontrolled AC Stark shift on the squeezed mode and propose future important applications, including test of spontaneous collapse theories and an improvement of large-scale, high-precision gradiometers.

•Jan 1, 2021•0 citations

SU(1,1) interferometry via four-wave mixing in Rb

Travis Horrom, Brian E. Anderson, Prasoon Gupta +1 more

Quantum-enhanced precision measurements have emerged as one of the most useful applications of quantum optics. Exploiting quantum states of light and quantum processes, classical measurement limits can be surpassed, leading to improvements in areas including clocks, spectroscopy, magnetometry, and imaging. One measurement where straightforward quantum enhancements are possible is phase sensing with an interferometer. One can inject squeezed vacuum states into the dark port of the beamsplitter in a traditional interferometer to reduce the quantum noise and reach phase sensitivities beyond the shot noise limit. An alternate approach is to replace the beamsplitters of an interferometer with nonlinear parametric amplifiers, which produce nonclassical states of light that can be used to surpass classical performance. This so called SU(1,1) interferometer can theoretically approach sensitivities that scale as 1/n, the Heisenberg limit where n is the interior phase sensing photon number, compared to the shot noise limit of 1/ √ n for a traditional interferometer [1]. I will present our group’s experimental progress in testing a Mach-Zender SU(1,1) interferometer using four-wave mixers (4WMs) in hot Rb atoms as the parametric beamsplitters. The 4WM process generates entangled twin beams which serve as the two arms of the interferometer, and are then recombined in a second 4WM cell, resulting in a phase-sensitive output. We will extend the work done on this interferometer [2, 3] by performing a detailed analysis of the output signal to noise through homodyne measurements, and will attempt to observe the better-than-shot-noise scaling of the sensitivity. We will also consider the various difficulties of this optical interferometer such as the susceptibility to loss and imperfect mode-matching within the interferometer. Our group is also considering an analogous SU(1,1) interferometer in a cold atom system. Collisions in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms give rise to a 4WM process that produces spin states of the atoms which are entangled in atom number. These interactions can be controlled to set up an SU(1,1) atom interferometer, where the relevant measurements are now atomic population differences rather than photon intensities. These enhancements can lead to drastic improvements in atomic spin interferometry [3, 4].

•Jan 1, 2015•3 citations

Quantum Interferometric Sensors

Kishore T. Kapale, L.D. DiDomenico, Hwang Lee +2 more

Quantum entanglement has the potential to revolutionize the entire field of interferometric sensing by providing many orders of magnitude improvement in interferometer sensitivity. The quantum-entangled particle interferometer approach is very general and applies to many types of interferometers. In particular, without nonlocal entanglement, a generic classical interferometer has a statistical-sampling shot-noise limited sensitivity that scales like $1/\sqrt{N}$, where $N$ is the number of particles passing through the interferometer per unit time. However, if carefully prepared quantum correlations are engineered between the particles, then the interferometer sensitivity improves by a factor of $\sqrt{N}$ to scale like 1/N, which is the limit imposed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. For optical interferometers operating at milliwatts of optical power, this quantum sensitivity boost corresponds to an eight-order-of-magnitude improvement of signal to noise. This effect can translate into a tremendous science pay-off for space missions. For example, one application of this new effect is to fiber optical gyroscopes for deep-space inertial guidance and tests of General Relativity (Gravity Probe B). Another application is to ground and orbiting optical interferometers for gravity wave detection, Laser Interferometer Gravity Observatory (LIGO) and the European Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), respectively. Other applications are to Satellite-to-Satellite laser Interferometry (SSI) proposed for the next generation Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE II).

arXiv:quant-ph/0507150•Jul 15, 2005•1 citation
Interferometers operating at or close to quantum limits of precision have found wide application in tabletop searches for physics beyond the standard model, the study of fundamental forces and symmetries of nature and foundational tests of quantum mechanics. The limits imposed by quantum fluctuations and measurement backaction on conventional interferometers (δϕ∼1/Nδϕ\sim 1/\sqrt{N}δϕ∼1/N​) have spurred the development of schemes to circumvent these limits through quantum interference, multiparticle interactions and entanglement. A prominent example of such schemes, the so-called SU(1,1)SU(1,1)SU(1,1) interferometer, has been shown to be particularly robust against particle loss and inefficient detection, and has been demonstrated with photons and ultracold atoms. Here, we realize a SU(1,1)SU(1,1)SU(1,1) interferometer in a fundamentally new platform in which the interfering arms are distinct flexural modes of a millimeter-scale mechanical resonator. We realize up to 15.4(3) dB of noise squeezing and demonstrate the Heisenberg scaling of interferometric sensitivity (δϕ∼1/Nδϕ\sim 1/Nδϕ∼1/N), corresponding to a 6-fold improvement in measurement precision over a conventional interferometer. Our work extends the optomechanical toolbox for the quantum manipulation of macroscopic mechanical motion and presents new avenues for studies of optomechanical sensing and the nonequilibrium dynamics of multimode optomechanical systems.
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle places a fundamental limit in the measurement precision for certain pairs of physical quantities, such as position and momentum, time and energy or amplitude and phase. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, any attempt to extract certain information from a quantum object would inevitably perturbitinanunpredictableway. This raises one question,"What is the precision limit in such quantum measurements?" The answer, standard quantum limit (SQL), has been obtained by Braginsky to figure out the fundamental quantum limits of displacement measurement in the context of gravitational wave detection. To circumvent the unavoidable quantum back-action from the priori measurement, quantum non-demolition measurement (QND) methods were introduced by Braginsky and Thorne. To surpass the SQL of the displacement measurement in an interferometer, one can measure only one quadrature of the mechanical motion while give up the information about the other canonically conjugated quadrature. Such measurements can be performed by periodic driving the mechanical oscillator, i.e. the back-action evading (BAE) measurement. Cavity optomechanics provides an ideal table-top platform for the testing of the quantum measurement theory. Mechanical oscillator is coupled to electromagnetic field via radiation pressure, which is enhanced by an optical micro-cavity. Over the last decade, laser cooling has enabled the preparation of mechanical oscillator in the ground state in both optical and microwave systems. BAE measurements of mechanical motion have been allowed in the microwave electromechanical systems, which led to the observations of mechanical squeezing and entanglement. However, despite the theoretical proposal almost 40 years ago, the sub-SQL measurements still remain elusive. This thesis reports our efforts approach the sub-SQL with a highly sideband-resolved silicon optomechanical crystal (OMC) in a 3He buffer gas environment at 2K. The OMC couples an optical mode at telecommunication wavelengths and a colocalized mechanical mode at GHz frequencies. The Helium3 buffer gas environment allows sufficient thermalization of the OMC despite the drastically decreased silicon thermal conductivity. We observe Floquet dynamics in motional sideband asymmetry measurement when employing multiple probe tones. The Floquet dynamics arises due to presence of Kerr-type nonlinearities and gives rise to an artificially modified motional sideband asymmetry, resulting from a synthetic gauge field among the Fourier modes. We demonstrate the first optical continuous two-tone backaction-evading measurement of a localized GHz frequency mechanical mode of silicon OMC close to the ground state by showing the transition from conventional sideband asymmetry to backaction-evading measurement. We discover a fundamental two-tone optomechanical instability and demonstrate its implications on the back-action evading measurement. Such instability imposes a fundamental limitation on other two-tone schemes, such as dissipative quantum mechanical squeezing. We demonstrate state-of-art laser sideband cooling of the mechanical motion to a mean thermal occupancy of 0.09 quantum, which is 7.4dB of the oscillator's zero-point energy and corresponds to 92% ground state probability. This also enables us to observe the dissipative mechanical squeezing below the zero-point motion for the first time with laser light.
Quantum sensing using atom interferometry possesses immense potential for application in gravimetry, inertial navigation and for gravitational wave detection, apart from carrying out tests of fundamental physics. Atom interferometry can be used to perform absolute inertial measurements with unprecedented long term stability, unlike classical sensors which are prone to drift and incur calibration errors. However, atom interferometers seldom achieve their fundamental sensitivity due to the coupling of ambient vibrations. It is the dominant noise source that not only impairs performance but also affects its operability. Ideal compensation of the effects due to vibration noise using a versatile accelerometer, while concurrently enabling miniaturized atom interferometer setups has not been pioneered. Such a compact hybrid quantum sensor will enable reliable operation with an enhanced performance in field applications, paving the way for robust atom interferometry beyond laboratory conditions. A novel optomechanical resonator has been designed, developed and successfully hybridized with an atom interferometer to suppress the effects of vibration noise, and the results are presented in this thesis. The optomechanical resonator’s inertial test mass is simultaneously used to create a continuous intracavity optical lattice to sense its displacement, and a pulsed optical lattice to manipulate the atoms. For the first time, a broadband accelerometer is seamlessly hybridized with an atom interferometer via mechanical resonator mediated coupling of the optical lattices to measure acceleration. This enables elimination of vibration induced measurement ambiguity in our atom interferometer with a well defined mechanical transfer function. Vibration noise correlation is demonstrated up to our prototype atom interferometer’s most sensitive operating mode of T = 6 ms using double Bragg diffraction, ultimately limited by its technical noise. The optomechanical resonator measures acceleration with a sensitivity down to 1.1×10−6 ms−2/ √Hz corresponding to a displacement sensitivity of 8.6 × 10−15 m/ √Hz. Substantial 1/f noise suppression due to the developed optical readout scheme enables a measurement bandwidth spanning from sub-hertz frequencies up to several kilohertz. Multiple versions of the optomechanical resonator with different characteristics were developed and hybridized with our atom interferometer. This paves the way for developing tailored optomechanical resonators for specific inertial sensing applications.
When one seeks knowledge of the full dynamics of the displacement of a harmonic oscillator, non-commutation of the two mechanical quadratures requires a minimum added noise equal to the mechanical resonator's zero point motion. This fundamental quantum limit (QL) is a distinct bound from the standard quantum limit (SQL) that is often considered in interferometric displacement measurement. The SQL is a consequence of the non-commutation of the probe's quadratures in a specific measurement configuration and is characterized by a tradeoff between shot noise (SN) imprecision and quantum backaction that are uncorrelated. The QL and SQL reach the same limit when probing at the peak mechanical response, but the QL can be a significantly lower bound off resonance. In studies of micro-mechanical motion, there has been great interest in observing quantum backaction and approaching the SQL on mechanical resonance. However, much of what historically motivates SQL research is displacement monitoring over a wide frequency band, such as gravitational wave searches. One long-standing concept for surpassing the SQL is to introduce correlations by changing the readout quadrature as a function of frequency in a technique known as variational readout. Here we harness quantum correlations in the measurement of a macroscopic resonator by modifying the readout quadrature of an optical interferometer. By using an optomechanical device thermalized to a dilution refrigerator, we measure quantum noise far off resonance where we improve upon the off-resonance SQL for our quantum efficiency.
Quantum Sensors, like atom interferometers (AI), can be employed for high-precision measurements of inertial forces, including their application as gravimeters, gradiometers, accelerometers, and gyroscopes. Their measurement principle relies on ultracold atoms that are prepared in quantum-mechanical superposition states in external degrees of freedom. These states can be prepared by a momentum transfer of a Raman laser. Then the superposition state senses the effect of an inertial force, which induce a corresponding relative phase. The phase is read out by a final coupling which converts the interferometric phase into a atom number difference between the two states. The difference provides an estimate of the interferometric phase and the corresponding quantity of interest. The quantum mechanical noise of the atomic ensemble cause a fundamental uncertainty of this estimation, which I analyze for generic AIs. For small atomic densities, the quantum phase noise of the ensemble limits the interferometric sensitivity. For large densities, quantum number fluctuations generate density fluctuations, which generates phase noise. I show that these two competing effects result in an optimal atom number with a maximal interferometer resolution. Squeezed atomic samples allow for a reduction of the quantum noise of one quantity at the expense of an increased noise along of a conjugate quantity. Phase and number are such quantities which obey to a variant of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Neither phase nor number squeezing can improve the maximal interferometer resolution. As one main result of this thesis, I show how an optimal squeezing in between number and phase squeezing, allows for a fundamental improvement. I evaluate possible experimental paths to implement the proposed protocol. Concepts for a squeezing-enhanced operation of external-degree AIs have not yet been demonstrated. I propose and implement an atomic gravimeter, which is designed to accept spin-squeezed atomic states as input states. The interferometer is designed such that the interferometer couplings are performed in spin space, while the phase accumulation is performed in momentum states. For this interferometer, the squeezed input can be directly obtained from spin dynamics in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. The main noise contributions in the experiment are analyzed, which results in a factor of 84 above the relevant quantum limit, preventing a squeezing enhancement so far. I outline a suppression of the main noise source, uncontrolled AC Stark shift on the squeezed mode and propose future important applications, including test of spontaneous collapse theories and an improvement of large-scale, high-precision gradiometers.
Quantum-enhanced precision measurements have emerged as one of the most useful applications of quantum optics. Exploiting quantum states of light and quantum processes, classical measurement limits can be surpassed, leading to improvements in areas including clocks, spectroscopy, magnetometry, and imaging. One measurement where straightforward quantum enhancements are possible is phase sensing with an interferometer. One can inject squeezed vacuum states into the dark port of the beamsplitter in a traditional interferometer to reduce the quantum noise and reach phase sensitivities beyond the shot noise limit. An alternate approach is to replace the beamsplitters of an interferometer with nonlinear parametric amplifiers, which produce nonclassical states of light that can be used to surpass classical performance. This so called SU(1,1) interferometer can theoretically approach sensitivities that scale as 1/n, the Heisenberg limit where n is the interior phase sensing photon number, compared to the shot noise limit of 1/ √ n for a traditional interferometer [1]. I will present our group’s experimental progress in testing a Mach-Zender SU(1,1) interferometer using four-wave mixers (4WMs) in hot Rb atoms as the parametric beamsplitters. The 4WM process generates entangled twin beams which serve as the two arms of the interferometer, and are then recombined in a second 4WM cell, resulting in a phase-sensitive output. We will extend the work done on this interferometer [2, 3] by performing a detailed analysis of the output signal to noise through homodyne measurements, and will attempt to observe the better-than-shot-noise scaling of the sensitivity. We will also consider the various difficulties of this optical interferometer such as the susceptibility to loss and imperfect mode-matching within the interferometer. Our group is also considering an analogous SU(1,1) interferometer in a cold atom system. Collisions in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms give rise to a 4WM process that produces spin states of the atoms which are entangled in atom number. These interactions can be controlled to set up an SU(1,1) atom interferometer, where the relevant measurements are now atomic population differences rather than photon intensities. These enhancements can lead to drastic improvements in atomic spin interferometry [3, 4].
Quantum entanglement has the potential to revolutionize the entire field of interferometric sensing by providing many orders of magnitude improvement in interferometer sensitivity. The quantum-entangled particle interferometer approach is very general and applies to many types of interferometers. In particular, without nonlocal entanglement, a generic classical interferometer has a statistical-sampling shot-noise limited sensitivity that scales like 1/N1/\sqrt{N}1/N​, where NNN is the number of particles passing through the interferometer per unit time. However, if carefully prepared quantum correlations are engineered between the particles, then the interferometer sensitivity improves by a factor of N\sqrt{N}N​ to scale like 1/N, which is the limit imposed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. For optical interferometers operating at milliwatts of optical power, this quantum sensitivity boost corresponds to an eight-order-of-magnitude improvement of signal to noise. This effect can translate into a tremendous science pay-off for space missions. For example, one application of this new effect is to fiber optical gyroscopes for deep-space inertial guidance and tests of General Relativity (Gravity Probe B). Another application is to ground and orbiting optical interferometers for gravity wave detection, Laser Interferometer Gravity Observatory (LIGO) and the European Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), respectively. Other applications are to Satellite-to-Satellite laser Interferometry (SSI) proposed for the next generation Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE II).