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:2506.23250

Sensitivity Enhancement in Atom-Interferometer Gyroscopes via Phase-Modulation Signal Readout Scheme

Sotatsu Otabe, Naoki Kaku, Tomoya Sato, Martin Miranda, Kawasaki, Takuya, Mikio Kozuma

Published Jun 29, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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 $1.20\pm0.04$ 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.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2506.23250

Related papers

Self-calibrated atom-interferometer gyroscope by modulating atomic velocities

Honghui Chen, Zhan-Wei Yao, Ze-Xi Lu +10 more

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.

arXiv:2303.00239•Review of Scientific Instruments•May 1, 2024•5 citations

Real-time compensation scheme for the accurate measurement of the differential phase in a dual-atom-interferometer gyroscope

Ze-Xi Lu, Zhan-Wei Yao, Honghui Chen +10 more

A dual-atom-interferometer gyroscope has high sensitivity for accurate rotation measurements because of its immunity to common-mode noise. However, a measurement error is induced as the common phase noise, e.g., vibration noise, increases. In this work, we demonstrated a real-time compensation (RTC) scheme to improve the accuracy of measurements of the differential phase in dual atom interferometers. The vibration noise was measured by two seismometers and its induced phase shift was fed back to the Raman lasers after this shift was calculated based on the sensitivity function of the atom interferometers. After the RTC module was applied, the interference signals obtained via the square modulation method were stabilized at their midfringe points, which caused the vibration-induced phase noise for each of the atom interferometers to decrease from 495 mrad to 165 mrad. The differential phase error obtained by the dual atom interferometers and two seismometers was reduced from 114.8 mrad to 49.6 mrad, which implies that the rotation measurement error was improved by a factor of 2.3. This work paves the way to accurately measuring the rotation signal and has promising applications in fields of precision measurements.

Physical Review A•Mar 10, 2025•2 citations

Closed-loop measurements in an atom-interferometer gyroscope with compensation for velocity-dependent phase dispersion

Tomoya Sato, Naoki Nishimura, Naoki Kaku +4 more

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 $0.68\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^{2}$ 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.

arXiv:2407.05696•Physical Review Applied•Apr 1, 2025•11 citations

Quantum-enhanced gyroscopy with rotating anisotropic Bose–Einstein condensates

L M Rico-Gutierrez, Timothy P. Spiller, Jacob Dunningham

High-precision gyroscopes are a key component of inertial navigation systems. By considering matter wave gyroscopes that make use of entanglement it should be possible to gain some advantages in terms of sensitivity, size, and resources used over unentangled optical systems. In this paper we consider the details of such a quantum-enhanced atom interferometry scheme based on atoms trapped in a carefully-chosen rotating trap. We consider all the steps: entanglement generation, phase imprinting, and read-out of the signal and show that quantum enhancement should be possible in principle. While the improvement in performance over equivalent unentangled schemes is small, our feasibility study opens the door to further developments and improvements.

arXiv:1503.02450•New Journal of Physics•Apr 14, 2015•8 citations

Development and characterisation of a cold atom interferometer with composite and optimal control pulse implementation

Joel Abraham

Developments in the precise control of quantum systems have led to advances in both fundamental research and emerging technologies in areas including quantum sensing and computation. One particularly useful application is atom interferometry, which uses laser pulses to split, redirect, and recombine atomic wavepackets, enabling precision measurements of inertial effects. This thesis presents the construction and characterisation of a compact cold atom interferometer, to meet the longer-term aim of developing an atomic gyroscope. We detail the setup of a rubidium-85 Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT) and the development of a laser to perform Raman transitions across the hyperfine Rb-85 levels. We then demonstrate and characterise the coherent manipulation of the atomic state of the rubidium as well as atom-interferometric fringes, in a Doppler-insensitive configuration. Systematic errors can degrade the performance of laser pulse interactions with cold atoms by reducing the fidelity of the atom–light interactions. In this thesis, we investigate the implementation of composite pulses and optimal control pulses, which use pulses with varying phase sequences and durations to mitigate against experimental inhomogeneities. We also show that phase modulators can introduce distortions in both the applied laser phase and the Raman modulation amplitude, which can in turn degrade pulse performance. To address this, we develop a compensation protocol that corrects for these non-linearities and demonstrate that it leads to a further improvement in pulse fidelity, for the Waltz and Knill composite pulses. Applying this protocol to the rotary echo sequence led to Rabi oscillations that could last 4 times longer, compared to the uncalibrated IQ modulator. Although an optimal control inversion pulse showed more resilience to the IQ modulator distortions, the Mach-Zehnder interferometer sequence was more susceptible to them. It was demonstrated that compensating for IQ modulator non-linearities improved the optimised fringe signal-to-noise ratio, and reduced the phase-offset error by a factor of 2.4.

•Oct 22, 2026•0 citations

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

Takuya Kawasaki, Sotatsu Otabe, Tomoya Sato +3 more

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.

arXiv:2406.03911•Physical Review A•Jan 2, 2025•3 citations
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.
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.
A dual-atom-interferometer gyroscope has high sensitivity for accurate rotation measurements because of its immunity to common-mode noise. However, a measurement error is induced as the common phase noise, e.g., vibration noise, increases. In this work, we demonstrated a real-time compensation (RTC) scheme to improve the accuracy of measurements of the differential phase in dual atom interferometers. The vibration noise was measured by two seismometers and its induced phase shift was fed back to the Raman lasers after this shift was calculated based on the sensitivity function of the atom interferometers. After the RTC module was applied, the interference signals obtained via the square modulation method were stabilized at their midfringe points, which caused the vibration-induced phase noise for each of the atom interferometers to decrease from 495 mrad to 165 mrad. The differential phase error obtained by the dual atom interferometers and two seismometers was reduced from 114.8 mrad to 49.6 mrad, which implies that the rotation measurement error was improved by a factor of 2.3. This work paves the way to accurately measuring the rotation signal and has promising applications in fields of precision measurements.
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.
High-precision gyroscopes are a key component of inertial navigation systems. By considering matter wave gyroscopes that make use of entanglement it should be possible to gain some advantages in terms of sensitivity, size, and resources used over unentangled optical systems. In this paper we consider the details of such a quantum-enhanced atom interferometry scheme based on atoms trapped in a carefully-chosen rotating trap. We consider all the steps: entanglement generation, phase imprinting, and read-out of the signal and show that quantum enhancement should be possible in principle. While the improvement in performance over equivalent unentangled schemes is small, our feasibility study opens the door to further developments and improvements.
Developments in the precise control of quantum systems have led to advances in both fundamental research and emerging technologies in areas including quantum sensing and computation. One particularly useful application is atom interferometry, which uses laser pulses to split, redirect, and recombine atomic wavepackets, enabling precision measurements of inertial effects. This thesis presents the construction and characterisation of a compact cold atom interferometer, to meet the longer-term aim of developing an atomic gyroscope. We detail the setup of a rubidium-85 Magneto-Optical Trap (MOT) and the development of a laser to perform Raman transitions across the hyperfine Rb-85 levels. We then demonstrate and characterise the coherent manipulation of the atomic state of the rubidium as well as atom-interferometric fringes, in a Doppler-insensitive configuration. Systematic errors can degrade the performance of laser pulse interactions with cold atoms by reducing the fidelity of the atom–light interactions. In this thesis, we investigate the implementation of composite pulses and optimal control pulses, which use pulses with varying phase sequences and durations to mitigate against experimental inhomogeneities. We also show that phase modulators can introduce distortions in both the applied laser phase and the Raman modulation amplitude, which can in turn degrade pulse performance. To address this, we develop a compensation protocol that corrects for these non-linearities and demonstrate that it leads to a further improvement in pulse fidelity, for the Waltz and Knill composite pulses. Applying this protocol to the rotary echo sequence led to Rabi oscillations that could last 4 times longer, compared to the uncalibrated IQ modulator. Although an optimal control inversion pulse showed more resilience to the IQ modulator distortions, the Mach-Zehnder interferometer sequence was more susceptible to them. It was demonstrated that compensating for IQ modulator non-linearities improved the optimised fringe signal-to-noise ratio, and reduced the phase-offset error by a factor of 2.4.
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.