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arXiv:2509.05942 · Physical Review Applied

Digital closed-loop thermal atomic beam interferometer for high-bandwidth, wide-dynamic-range, and simultaneous absolute sensing of acceleration and rotation

Tomoya Sato, Toshiyuki Hosoya, Martin Miranda, Hiroki Matsui, Yuki Miyazawa, Mikio Kozuma

Published Jan 22, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We present a theoretical proposal and simulation study of a digital closed-loop thermal atomic-beam interferometer for inertial navigation applications. The scheme synchronizes phase biasing with momentum-kick reversal through the atomic transit time, extracting four interferometric phases to suppress Raman beam path-length errors, while two-photon detuning feedback maintains a pseudo-inertial frame and eliminates cross-coupling. The interferometer enables simultaneous measurements of acceleration and rotation based on an absolute, atom-interferometric reference, with high bandwidth and a wide dynamic range. Numerical simulations verify that acceleration and angular velocity can be measured simultaneously and independently in real time without cross-coupling, demonstrating the absolute, decoupled nature of the proposed measurement scheme. We further evaluate the noise-limited performance of the sensor and obtain sensitivities of $3{\rm μm / s^2 / \sqrt{Hz}}$ (velocity random walk) and $15{\rm μdeg / \sqrt{h}}$ (angular random walk) for a ${170}^{\circ}$ $^{85}$Rb beam and an interferometer arm length of 100~mm, surpassing the performance of sensors currently used in state-of-the-art inertial navigation systems.

DOI
10.1103/pfbz-9yvj

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Atom interferometry shows high sensitivity for inertial measurements in the laboratory, but it faces difficulties in field applications because of a trade-off between sensitivity and size. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a small sensor with high resolution for measuring acceleration and rotation in inertial navigation applications. Presented here is a miniaturized inertial sensor capable of measuring acceleration and rotation simultaneously based on high-resolution dual atom interferometers. A sensor head is integrated within a volume of 100 l, in which the vacuum chambers are fabricated by bonding quartz-glass windows with epoxy resin. A photoelectric cabinet is composed of four 3U rack units by integrating optical modules and electronic units. Dual atom interference fringes with a contrast of 29% are observed, and the acceleration and rotation are measured simultaneously by extracting their phase shifts. By developing a temperature compensation method to eliminate phase drifts caused by the thermal deformation of the Raman mirrors and using wave vector reversal to eliminate the phase drifts independent of the direction of the wave vector, measurement resolutions of 40 ng at 518 s and 6.1 nrad/s at 10 880 s are achieved for acceleration and rotation, respectively, from Allan deviations.