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European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC)

A cold atom interferometer for high precision measurements

F. Yver, Arnaud Landragin, N. Dimarcq, Andr  Clairon, David Holleville, Patrick Cheinet, Philippe Bouyer, Ch Salomon, Ch. J. Bordé

Published Jan 1, 2003• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We build a cold atom interferometer to be used as high precision inertial sensor. Our setup is sensitive both to rotations and accelerations. The interferometer configuration is similar to an optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and it uses stimulated Raman transitions to manipulate the atomic wave packets (total interferometer time of 90 ms).

DOI
10.1109/eqec.2003.1314166

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We demonstrate a closed-loop light-pulse atom-interferometer inertial sensor that can realize continuous decoupled measurements of acceleration and rotation rate. The sensor operates with double-loop atom interferometers, which share the same Raman light pulses in a spatially separated Mach-Zehnder configuration and use continuous cold atomic beams propagating in opposite directions from two 2D+{\text{2D}}^{+}2D+ magneto-optical trappings. Acceleration and the rotation rate are decoupled and simultaneously measured by the sum and difference of dual-atom-interferometer signals, respectively. The sensitivities of inertial measurements are also increased to be approximately 1.86 times higher than that of a single atom interferometer. The acceleration phase shift is compensated in real time by phase locking these interferometers via the Raman laser phases from the sum-interferometer signal, and the gyroscope performance is improved. We achieve long-term stabilities of $6.1\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\text{\ensuremath{\mu}}\text{g}$ and 840 nrad/s for the acceleration and the rotation rate, respectively, using a short interrogation time of 0.87 ms (interference area A=0.097mm2A=0.097\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}{\text{mm}}^{2}A=0.097mm2). This work provides a building block for an atomic interferometer-based inertial measurement unit for use in field applications that require a high data rate and high stability.