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arXiv:2510.01900 · Physical Review Applied

Temporal pulse origins in atom-interferometric quantum sensors

Jack Saywell, Nikolaos Dedes, Max Carey, B. Barrett, Tim Freegarde

Published Jan 12, 2026• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum sensors based upon atom interferometry typically rely on radio-frequency or optical pulses to coherently manipulate atomic states and make precise measurements of inertial and gravitational effects. An advantage of these sensors over their classical counterparts is often said to be that their measurement scale factor is precisely known and highly stable. However, in practice the finite pulse duration makes the sensor scale factor dependent upon the pulse shape and sensitive to variations in control field intensity, frequency, and atomic velocity. Here, we explore the concept of a temporal pulse origin in atom interferometry, where the inertial phase response of any pulse can be parameterized using a single point in time. We show that the temporal origin permits a simple determination of the measurement scale factor and its stability against environmental perturbations. Moreover, the temporal origin can be treated as a tunable parameter in the design of tailored sequences of shaped pulses to enhance scale factor stability and minimize systematic errors. We demonstrate through simulations that this approach to pulse design can reduce overall sequence durations while increasing robustness to realistic fluctuations in control field amplitude. Our results show that the temporal pulse origin explains a broad class of systematic errors in existing devices and enables the design of short, robust pulses which we expect will improve the performance of current and next-generation interferometric quantum sensors.

DOI
10.1103/f2qs-hljw

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Quantum sensors based upon atom interferometry typically rely on radio-frequency or optical pulses to coherently manipulate atomic states and make precise measurements of inertial and gravitational effects. An advantage of these sensors over their classical counterparts is often said to be that their measurement scale factor is precisely known and highly stable. However, in practice the finite pulse duration makes the sensor scale factor dependent upon the pulse shape and sensitive to variations in control field intensity, frequency, and atomic velocity. Here, we explore the concept of a temporal pulse origin in atom interferometry, where the inertial phase response of any pulse can be parameterized using a single point in time. We show that the temporal origin permits a simple determination of the measurement scale factor and its stability against environmental perturbations. Moreover, the temporal origin can be treated as a tunable parameter in the design of tailored sequences of shaped pulses to enhance scale factor stability and minimize systematic errors. We demonstrate through simulations that this approach to pulse design can reduce overall sequence durations while increasing robustness to realistic fluctuations in control field amplitude. Our results show that the temporal pulse origin explains a broad class of systematic errors in existing devices and enables the design of short, robust pulses which we expect will improve the performance of current and next-generation interferometric quantum sensors.
High-precision inertial sensing demonstrations with light pulse atom interferometry have typically used Raman pulses having durations orders of magnitude shorter than the dwell time between interferometer pulses. Environmentally robust sensors operating at high-bandwidth will be required to operate at short (millisecond scale) dwell times between Raman pulses. In such an operational mode, the Raman pulse duration becomes an appreciable fraction of the dwell time between pulses. In addition, high-precision inertial sensing applications have typically been demonstrated in mildly dynamic or nondynamic environments having low rate of change of inertial input, ensuring that applied Raman pulses satisfy the Raman resonance condition. Application of nonresonant pulses will be inevitable in sensors registering time-varying inertial input. We present a diagrammatic technique for calculation of atomic output state populations for multipulse atom optics manipulations that explicitly account for the effects of finite pulse duration and finite Raman detuning effects on the laser-induced atomic phase. We analyze several atom interferometer sequences. We report accelerometer and gyroscope phase evolution for fixed Raman laser frequency difference incorporating corrections in powers of the ratio of pulse duration to time interval between interferometer pulses. Our accelerometer result agrees with other published results.
Atom-interferometric quantum sensors could revolutionize navigation, civil engineering, and Earth observation. However, operation in real-world environments is challenging due to external interference, platform noise, and constraints on size, weight, and power. Here we experimentally demonstrate that tailored light pulses designed using robust control techniques mitigate significant error sources in an atom-interferometric accelerometer. To mimic the effect of unpredictable lateral platform motion, we apply laser-intensity noise that varies up to 20% from pulse-to-pulse. Our robust control solution maintains performant sensing, while the utility of conventional pulses collapses. By measuring local gravity, we show that our robust pulses preserve interferometer scale factor and improve measurement precision by 10× in the presence of this noise. We further validate these enhancements by measuring applied accelerations over a 200 μg range up to 21× more precisely at the highest applied noise level. Our demonstration provides a pathway to improved atom-interferometric inertial sensing in real-world settings.
Atom interferometric sensors can enable extremely precise measurements of inertial motion and external fields by manipulating and interfering atomic states using pulses of laser light. However, like many experiments that require the coherent control of a quantum system, the interaction fidelity is limited by inhomogeneities in the control fields. Variations in atomic velocity and laser intensity lead different atoms to experience different interactions under the same pulse, reducing the interference fringe contrast, introducing bias, and limiting the sensitivity. We present the theoretical design and experimental demonstration of pulses for atom interferometry which compensate inhomogeneities in atomic velocity and laser intensity. By varying the laser phase throughout a pulse and choosing an appropriate fidelity measure to be maximised, pulses are optimised by adapting optimal control techniques originally designed for nuclear magnetic resonance applications. We show using simulations that optimised pulses significantly improve the fidelity of interferometer operations and verify this experimentally using Raman transitions within a cold sample of 85Rb atoms. We demonstrate a robust state-transfer pulse that achieves a fidelity of 99.8(3)% in a ∼ 35 µK sample and obtain a threefold increase in the fringe contrast using a full sequence of optimised pulses. Many of the pulse shapes found by optimal control are simple and symmetrical, and we show that certain symmetries are integral to error compensation. By systematically exploring the dependence of these solutions on the model and optimisation parameters, we demonstrate a stability which underlines the general applicability of optimised pulses to a range of interferometer configurations. Finally, we introduce and computationally analyse a novel theoretical approach to improve the sensitivity of large-momentum-transfer (LMT) interferometers, whereby “biselective” pulses are optimised to track the changing resonance conditions encountered in extended pulse sequences that are designed to increase the measurement sensitivity. When conventional pulses of steady phase are used, the interference contrast decays rapidly as extra pulses are added because of the change in resonance. Using numerical simulations, we show that bi-selective pulses maintain interaction fidelity throughout extended pulse sequences, allowing significant increases in the sensitivity that may be obtained using LMT.
The sensitivity of atom interferometers depends on the fidelity of the light pulses used as beamsplitters and mirrors. Atom interferometers typically employ pulses that affect π/2 and π fractional Rabi oscillations, the fidelities of which are reduced when there are variations in atomic velocity and laser intensity. We have previously demonstrated the application of optimal control theory to design pulses more robust to such errors; however, if these variations exhibit a time dependence over periods on the order of the interferometer duration then phase shifts can be introduced in the final fringe that potentially reduce the sensitivity. In this paper, we explain why care must be taken when optimising interferometer pulse sequences to ensure that phase shifts arising from inter-pulse variations are not significantly increased. We show that these phase shifts can in fact be minimised by choosing an appropriate measure of individual pulse fidelity.
Abstract Since the double-loop atom interferometer consisting of Raman π 2 − π − π − π 2 four-pulse sequences can eliminate the dependence of the interferometric phase shift on the atomic initial velocity, it is widely used for rotation measurements. However, our research shows that by coupling itself with both the atomic initial velocity and the laser detuning, the short pulse duration can contribute to unknown systematic errors within the current instrument sensitivity. The coupling of the pulse duration with the laser detuning inside the device is verified experimentally and presented in this work. An improved pulse sequence design is developed to eliminate these systematic errors and improve the precision of the rotation measurements.
Quantum sensors based on cold atoms have enormous potential to unlock new capabilities in GPS-denied navigation, civil engineering, intelligence, and Earth observation. But operating these devices in realistic environments is currently extremely challenging, and for the most part the advantages of choosing a quantum sensor over a conventional alternative are lost in the transition from laboratory to noisy field-based environments. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time in hardware that tailored light pulses, designed and implemented in software using robust control techniques, can substantially mitigate some of the most nefarious effects in a Bragg atom interferometer. We show experimentally that embedding robust control into sensor operation can improve the signal-to-noise ratio of a state-of-the-art Bragg-pulse cold-atom interferometric sensor by a factor of 4× under ideal conditions. In the presence of laser-intensity noise that varies up to 20% from shot-to-shot, commensurate with common platform vibrations, we show experimentally that using the same robust control solutions preserves fringe visibility with minimal degradation while the utility of the primitive Gaussian pulses collapses, delivering an at least 8× improvement in phase-estimation uncertainty compared with primitive pulse schemes. Across all observations, robust control delivers better performance in a noisy environment than the native hardware performance with primitive pulses under approximately ideal conditions. Finally, building on this demonstration we present a validated theoretical concept to extend this performance improvement to compact devices using concatenated sequences of robust pulses designed to enhance the sensor’s scale factor. Time-domain simulations reveal up to 10× performance enhancement in the presence of realistic atomic-cloud effects at 102ℏk momentum separation. These results show for the first time that software-defined quantum sensor operation can deliver useful performance in environmental regimes where primitive operation is impossible, providing a pathway to augment the performance of current and next generation portable cold-atom inertial sensors in real fielded settings.