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arXiv:1912.06851 · AVS Quantum Science

Compact chip-scale guided cold atom gyrometers for inertial navigation: Enabling technologies and design study

Carlos L. Garrido Alzar

Published Dec 1, 2019• 79 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

This work reviews the topic of rotation sensing with compact cold atom interferometers. A representative set of compact free-falling cold atom gyroscopes is considered because, in different respects, they establish a rotation-measurement reference for cold guided-atom technologies. This review first discusses enabling technologies relevant to a set of key functional building blocks of an atom chip-based compact inertial sensor with cold guided atoms. These functionalities concern the accurate and reproducible positioning of atoms to initiate a measurement cycle, the coherent momentum transfer to the atom wave packets, the suppression of propagation-induced decoherence due to potential roughness, on-chip detection, and vacuum dynamics because of its impact on sensor stability, which is due to the measurement dead time. Based on the existing enabling technologies, the design of an atom chip gyroscope with guided atoms is formalized using a design case that treats design elements such as guiding, fabrication, scale factor, rotation-rate sensitivity, spectral response, important noise sources, and sensor stability.

DOI
10.1116/1.5120348

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This work reviews the topic of rotation sensing with compact cold atom interferometers. A representative set of compact free-falling cold atom gyroscopes is considered because, in different respects, they establish a rotation-measurement reference for cold guided-atom technologies. This review first discusses enabling technologies relevant to a set of key functional building blocks of an atom chip-based compact inertial sensor with cold guided atoms. These functionalities concern the accurate and reproducible positioning of atoms to initiate a measurement cycle, the coherent momentum transfer to the atom wave packets, the suppression of propagation-induced decoherence due to potential roughness, on-chip detection, and vacuum dynamics because of its impact on sensor stability, which is due to the measurement dead time. Based on the existing enabling technologies, the design of an atom chip gyroscope with guided atoms is formalized using a design case that treats design elements such as guiding, fabrication, scale factor, rotation-rate sensitivity, spectral response, important noise sources, and sensor stability.
In the context of the second quantum revolution, the field of quantum sensors is in full expansion. One of the corner stones of this field is inertial sensing through cold-atom interferometry which provides sensors of high precision and stability. Size reduction is one of the main tasks in order to develop atomic inertial sensors that could apply to inertial navigation: this leads to the development of atom-chips. It is with this context in mind that this thesis investigates an atom-chip gyro in a collaboration between the University of Sussex and l'Observatoire de Paris (France). The experimental work is hosted at l'Observatoire de Paris where we worked on atom-chip fabrication, comparing metal deposition by evaporation and by electroplating, and paying attention on the wire's roughness as it impacts on the magnetic waveguide and therefore the atoms. But the wire's roughness is only one source of noise to the magnetic waveguide. Low noise current supplies are also studied and characterised. Furthermore, using the density operator and coherent state basis we develop a simple and elegant formalism under a 1D approximation. We use a new approach to show how temperature inuences the propagation of a wavepacket by increasing the spatial spreading while decreasing the wavepacket coherence. We also built a model for the pumping dynamics of a cold-atom experiment in a single vacuum chamber which matches experimental data from l'Observatoire de Paris and is an important step to work on size and the dead time reduction of sensors. All these different steps present in this thesis take us towards a working inertial sensor. While working on noise characterisation which will always remain a fundamental issue in building an inertial sensor, this thesis presents new models and approaches that may benefit the development of quantum technologies
We propose to develop a new generation of compact high sensitivity gyroscopes using guided matter-waves on atom chips, able to fulfill the requirements of metrological applications. They will be designed to overcome the main limitations of free falling atoms interferometers: interrogation time and quantum projection noise. A cloud of cold 87Rb atoms will be coherently split and constrained to propagate along a circular guide of a few millimeters radius. At the output of the guide an interference signal sensitive to rotation via the Sagnac effect will be measured.
Inertial sensors based on cold atom interferometry exhibit many interesting features for applications related to inertial navigation, particularly in terms of sensitivity and long-term stability. However, at present the typical atom interferometer is still very much an experiment—consisting of a bulky, static apparatus with a limited dynamic range and high sensitivity to environmental effects. To be compliant with mobile applications further development is needed. In this work, we present a compact and mobile experiment, which we recently used to achieve the first inertial measurements with an atomic accelerometer onboard an aircraft. By integrating classical inertial sensors into our apparatus, we are able to operate the atomic sensor well beyond its standard operating range, corresponding to half of an interference fringe. We report atom-based acceleration measurements along both the horizontal and vertical axes of the aircraft with one-shot sensitivities of 2.3 × 10−4 g over a range of ∼ 0.1 g. The same technology can be used to develop cold-atom gyroscopes, which could surpass the best optical gyroscopes in terms of long-term sensitivity. Our apparatus was also designed to study multi-axis atom interferometry with the goal of realizing a full inertial measurement unit comprised of the three axes of acceleration and rotation. Finally, we present a compact and tunable laser system, which constitutes an essential part of any cold-atom-based sensor. The architecture of the laser is based on phase modulating a single fiber-optic laser diode, and can be tuned over a range of 1 GHz in less than 200 μs.
We report the first operation of a cold atom inertial sensor without dead time. Dead times in conventional cold atom interferometers originate from the preparation of a cold atom source prior to its injection in the interferometer and where information on inertial signals is lost. We use a sequence where we simultaneously prepare a cold atom source and operate a light pulse atom interferometer to circumvent the dead time limitation. Therefore the sensor continuously captures all the dynamics with respect to an inertial frame. We show that the continuous operation does not degrade the sensitivity and stability of the atom interferometer, by demonstrating a rotation sensitivity level of less than 1 nrad/s after 10 000 s of integration time. Such a sensitivity level improves previous results by more than an order of magnitude and opens applications of cold atom gyroscopes in inertial navigation and geophysics.
Accurate and stable measurement of inertial quantities is essential in geophysics, geodesy, fundamental physics, and inertial navigation. Here, we present an architecture for a compact cold-atom accelerometer-gyroscope based on a magnetically launched atom interferometer. Characterizing the launching technique, we demonstrate 700–parts per million gyroscope scale factor stability over 1 day, while acceleration and rotation rate bias stabilities of 7 × 10 −7 meters per second squared and 4 × 10 −7 radians per second are reached after 2 days of integration of the cold-atom sensor. Hybridizing it with a classical accelerometer and gyroscope, we correct their drift and bias to achieve respective 100-fold and 3-fold increase on the stability of the hybridized sensor compared to the classical ones. Compared to a state-of-the-art atomic gyroscope, the simplicity and scalability of our launching technique make this architecture easily extendable to a compact full six-axis inertial measurement unit, providing a pathway toward autonomous positioning and orientation using cold-atom sensors.
Matter-wave interferometry with atoms propagating in a guiding potential is expected to provide compact, scalable and precise inertial sensing. However, a rotation sensing device based on the Sagnac effect with atoms guided in a ring has not yet been implemented despite continuous efforts during the last two decades. Here we discuss some intrinsic effects that limit the coherence in such a device and propose a scheme that overcomes these limitations and enables a multi-pass guiding Sagnac interferometer with a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) on a chip in a ring potential. We analyze crucial dephasing effects: potential roughness, phase diffusion due to atom-atom interactions and number uncertainty, and phase fluctuations. Owing to the recent progress in achieving high momentum beam splitting, creating smooth guides, and manipulating the matter-wavepacket propagation, guided interferometry can be implemented within the coherence time allowed by phase diffusion. Despite the lower particle flux in a guided Sagnac ring and the miniaturization of the interferometer, the estimated sensitivity, for reasonable and practical realizations of an atom chip-based gyroscope, is comparable to that of free-space interferometers, reaching 45 nrads^{-1}Hz^{-1/2}. A significant improvement over state-of-the-art free-space gyrocope sensitivities can be envisioned by using thermal atoms instead of a BEC, whereby the interferometer can be operated in a continuous fashion with the coherence limited by the scattering rate of the atoms with the background gas. Taking into account the sensitivity times length of the interferometer as the figure of merit which takes into account compactness, our configuration is expected to deliver a potential improvement of 2-4 orders of magnitude over state-of-the-art free-space gyroscopes for a BEC, and 4-6 orders of magnitude for thermal atoms.