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arXiv:2406.03911 · Physical Review A

Analyzing the sensitivity of an atom interferometer with a phase-modulation readout scheme

Takuya Kawasaki, Sotatsu Otabe, Tomoya Sato, Martin Miranda, Nobuyuki Takei, Mikio Kozuma

Published Jan 2, 2025• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The sensitivity of an interferometer depends on its readout scheme. However, little attention has been paid to the readout schemes of atom interferometers from the viewpoint of their sensitivity. The difference in sensitivity between readout schemes or their optimization has not been considered in the literature. Herein we analytically calculate the sensitivities of an atom interferometer with typical readout schemes by applying the two-photon formalism, which was developed for optical interferometers to deal with quantum noise. Our calculations reveal that by using sinusoidal phase modulation, the sensitivity can surpass that obtained by the conventional phase sweeping scheme. The superiority of this phase modulation scheme for both cold and thermal atomic beams is demonstrated. In addition, we show that the phase modulation scheme is advantageous for atom-flux fluctuation and resists atom-flux drift. This study performs a general analysis of the sensitivity of atom interferometers and identifies an advantageous readout scheme.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.111.013302

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The sensitivity of an interferometer depends on its readout scheme. However, little attention has been paid to the readout schemes of atom interferometers from the viewpoint of their sensitivity. The difference in sensitivity between readout schemes or their optimization has not been considered in the literature. Herein we analytically calculate the sensitivities of an atom interferometer with typical readout schemes by applying the two-photon formalism, which was developed for optical interferometers to deal with quantum noise. Our calculations reveal that by using sinusoidal phase modulation, the sensitivity can surpass that obtained by the conventional phase sweeping scheme. The superiority of this phase modulation scheme for both cold and thermal atomic beams is demonstrated. In addition, we show that the phase modulation scheme is advantageous for atom-flux fluctuation and resists atom-flux drift. This study performs a general analysis of the sensitivity of atom interferometers and identifies an advantageous readout scheme.
Quantum sensors based on atom interferometers are advancing both fundamental physics and practical applications, with higher sensitivity being a key requirement for these investigations. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a sensitivity enhancement of an atom-interferometer gyroscope using a phase-modulation signal readout scheme. Phase modulation applied to the laser light used for atomic state manipulation is transferred to the atomic phase and read out via multi-harmonic demodulation. The observed sensitivity improvement factor of 1.20±0.041.20\pm0.041.20±0.04 over the conventional phase sweep scheme agrees with theoretical predictions. We also found that phase-dispersion compensation control, which compensates atomic velocity dispersion and preserves interference contrast at high angular rates, effectively eliminates the nonlinearity inherent in multi-harmonic demodulation. The sensitivity improvement achieved by our method is applicable to a broad class of atom interferometers and requires no modifications to the optical or vacuum systems, making it particularly effective for size-constrained applications such as large-baseline experiments and inertial navigation systems.
We investigated the sensitivities of atom interferometers in the usual fringe-scanning method (FSM) versus the fringe-locking method (FLM). The theoretical analysis shows that for typical noises in atom interferometers, the FSM will degrade the sensitivity while the FLM does not. The sensitivity-improvement factor of the FLM over the FSM depends on the type of noises, which is validated by numerical simulations. The detailed quantitative analysis on this fundamental issue is presented, and our analysis is readily extendable to other kinds of noises as well as other fringe shapes in addition to a cosine one.
Abstract Large momentum transfer (LMT) beam splitters are implemented in atom interferometers to increase their sensitivity. However, an LMT interferometer requires additional light pulses to modify the response function of the atom interferometer. In this paper, we develop an analytical model for the sensitivity function of LMT interferometers using sequential accelerating light pulses. We use the sensitivity function to calculate the acceleration sensitivity taking into account the pulse duration. In addition, the sensitivity to laser phase fluctuations is calculated, and we show that the pulse sequence can be engineered to mitigate the phase noise sensitivity.
Summary form only given.Atom interferometers have opened up new areas of fundamental and applied research. As well known from photon optics, multiple-beam interferometers offer an increased sensitivity on the relative phases between interfering waves. Very recently, first atomic multiple-beam interferometers were realized. These concepts are based on an atomic beam that is spatially split into coherent partial de Broglie waves, where the number of interfering waves is determined by the internal atomic multi-level scheme. We report on time-domain atomic interferometry within a two-level system.
The high inertial sensitivity of atom interferometers has been used to build accelerometers and gyrometers but this sensitivity makes these interferometers very sensitive to the laboratory seismic noise. This seismic noise induces a phase noise which is large enough to reduce the fringe visibility in many cases. We develop here a model calculation of this phase noise in the case of Mach-Zehnder atom interferometers and we apply this model to our thermal lithium interferometer. We are thus able to explain the observed dependence of the fringe visibility with the diffraction order. The dynamical model developed in the present paper should be very useful to further reduce this phase noise in atom interferometers and this reduction should open the way to improved interferometers.
Atom interferometry is currently developing rapidly, which is now reaching sufficient precision to motivate laboratory tests of general relativity. Thus, it is extremely significant to develop a general relativistic model for atom interferometers. In this paper, we mainly present an analytical derivation process and first give a complete vectorial expression for the relativistic interferometric phase shift in an atom interferometer. The dynamics of the interferometer are studied, where both the atoms and the light are treated relativistically. Then, an appropriate coordinate transformation for the light is performed crucially to simplify the calculation. In addition, the Bord\'e ABCDABCDABCD matrix combined with quantum mechanics and the ``perturbation'' approach are applied to make a methodical calculation for the total phase shift. Finally, we derive the relativistic phase shift kept up to a sensitivity of the acceleration $\ensuremath{\sim}1{0}^{\ensuremath{-}14}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}}^{2}$ for a $10\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{m}$-long atom interferometer.