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arXiv:2505.03865 · Physical Review Applied

Phase-modulation detection of a strontium-atom-interferometer gyroscope

Luke A. Kraft, Samuel A. Meek, Nathan Marliere, Akbar Jahangiri Jozani, Grant W. Biedermann

Published Jan 15, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We demonstrate a strontium thermal beam atom interferometer gyroscope (AIG) on a rotation table using the $^{1\!}S_0$-$ ^{3\!}P_1$ intercombination line, and measure large rotation rates exceeding 6 rad/s. Our demonstration relies upon a transit-time-resonant (TTR), phase modulation technique for detecting the AIG phase which rejects signal background and variations in fringe amplitude.

DOI
10.1103/8xtw-781t

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We demonstrate a strontium thermal beam atom interferometer gyroscope (AIG) on a rotation table using the 1 ⁣S0^{1\!}S_01S0​-3 ⁣P1 ^{3\!}P_13P1​ intercombination line, and measure large rotation rates exceeding 6 rad/s. Our demonstration relies upon a transit-time-resonant (TTR), phase modulation technique for detecting the AIG phase which rejects signal background and variations in fringe amplitude.
We demonstrate an atom interferometer gyroscope (AIG) using a strontium thermal beam. Our compact AIG consists of a stream of strontium atoms interacting with three laser pulses that split and recombine the matterwave flux to create a Mach-Zhender (MZ) interferometer sensitive to rotation. This system requires no cooling, no state preparation, and requires no microwave components. We also demonstrate a novel phase modulation technique for detecting the AIG response, which is especially useful for interferometers with a short time-of-flight. We will discuss our approach, latest results, and future plans. This thesis is organized in the following manner: Chapter 1 provides context to this work followed by relevant properties of ⁸⁸Sr. An overview of atom interferometry gyroscopes is covered in Chapter 2 followed by an explanation of phase modulation and its use in signal extraction in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 covers numerical investigation of the system parameter space. Next, the experimental apparatus is discussed in Chapter 5 followed by the results of our efforts in Chapter 6. Finally, Chapter 7 provides a summary of the most notable conclusions in this work.
We reports improvements to our Sagnac effect matter-wave interferometer gyroscope. This device now has a short-term rotation-rate sensitivity of 6 × 10 -10 rad s -1 over 1 s of integration, which is the best publicly reported value to date. Stimulated Raman transitions are used to coherently manipulate atoms from counterpropagating thermal beams, forming two interferometers with opposite rotation phase shifts, allowing rotation to be distinguished from acceleration and laser arbitrary phase. Furthermore, electronically compensating the rotation-induced Doppler shifts of the Raman lasers allows operation at an effective zero rotation rate, improving sensitivity and facilitating sensitive lock-in detection readout techniques. Long-term stability is promising but not yet fully characterized. Potential applications include inertial navigation, geophysical studies and tests of general relativity.
Atom-interferometer gyroscopes have attracted much attention for their long-term stability and extremely low drift. For such high-precision instruments, self-calibration to achieve an absolute rotation measurement is critical. In this work, we propose and demonstrate the self-calibration of an atom-interferometer gyroscope. This calibration is realized by using the detuning of the laser frequency to control the atomic velocity, thus modulating the scale factor of the gyroscope. The modulation determines the order and the initial phase of the interference stripe, thus eliminating the ambiguity caused by the periodicity of the interferometric signal. This self-calibration method is validated through a measurement of the Earth's rotation rate, and a relative uncertainty of 162 ppm is achieved. Long-term stable and self-calibrated atom-interferometer gyroscopes have important applications in the fields of fundamental physics, geophysics, and long-time navigation.
We present an experimental demonstration of the rotation measurement using a compact cold atom gyroscope. Atom interference fringes are observed in the stationary frame and the rotating frame, respectively. The phase shift and contrast of the interference fringe are experimentally investigated. The results show that the contrast of the interference fringe is well held when the platform is rotated, and the phase shift of the interference fringe is linearly proportional to the rotation rate of the platform. The long-term stability, which is evaluated by the overlapped Allan deviation, is 8.5 × 10 −6 rad/s over the integrating time of 1000 s.
We propose a new design of a multi-axis atom interferometer (AI) gyroscope based on a grating chip, which allows a single input laser beam for atomic trapping and coherent manipulation. Multiple AIs are formed by the input laser beam along with the other four diffractive beams generated by the grating chip. The rotation induced phase shifts from different input axes lead to different spatial interference fringes due to the modulation of the atomic velocity. With the point source interferometry (PSI) and the spatially resolved detection, multi-axis rotations may be measured by imaging the final atomic cloud after the interferometer sequence and decoding the information of spatial fringes from different input axes. Monte-Carlo based simulation are used for evaluating the proposed scheme and its application as a multi-axis gyroscope.
Atom-interferometer-based gyroscopes are expected to have a wide range of applications due to their high sensitivity; however, their dynamic range is limited by dephasing from the velocity-dependent Sagnac phase shift and the longitudinal velocity distribution of the atoms, restricting measurements of large angular velocities. In this study, we present a method for restoring the contrast deterioration in angular velocity measurements with interferometer gyroscopes using atomic beams. We show that by introducing a pseudorotation effect with appropriate two-photon detunings for Raman light in the interferometer, it is possible to effectively cancel the Sagnac phase shift for all atoms in the velocity distribution of the beam. Consequently, the contrast is unaffected by the rotation. Furthermore, we apply this method to an interferometer gyroscope with counterpropagating atomic beams sharing the same Raman light. It is found that the angular velocity of the system can be estimated through the detuning point where the phase difference between the two interferometers is zero. This approach ensures that the scale factor of the atom interferometer gyroscope is independent of the change in the longitudinal velocity distribution of the atomic beam. We demonstrate our technique using an interferometer gyroscope with thermal atomic beams of rubidium-87, achieving a measurement of angular velocity of $1.0{\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}/\mathrm{s}$ even with an acceleration of 0.68m/s20.68\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^{2}0.68m/s2 on a three-axis rotation table. This simple and robust dispersion-compensation method with Raman-light detuning will benefit dynamic angular velocity measurements in field applications such as the inertial navigation of vehicles.