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Journal de Physique IV (Proceedings)

An atom interferometer using thermal lithium atoms

Alain Miffre, Marion Jacquey, R. Delhuille, M Büchner, Carlo Rizzo, G. Trénec, J. Vigué

Published Nov 1, 2004• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

\nWe have built an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type, operating with thermal lithium atoms [1]. Its design is largely inspired by previous works done by the groups of D. Pritchard [2], A. Zeilinger [3] and S.A. Lee [4]. In our apparatus, the atomic wave is diffracted in the Bragg regime by three laser sanding waves to achieve a Mach-Zehnder configuration. This paper briefly recalls the diffraction process and shows the experimental results obtained in our group. Our apparatus is able to achieve a high fringe contrast of 74 % with a large mean detected atom flux of $1.5 \\times 10^{4}$s$^{-1}$. Finally, the paper ends with the measurement of the velocity distribution of our lithium beam using a light induced fluorescence technique.\n

DOI
10.1051/jp4:2004119072

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\nWe have built an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type, operating with thermal lithium atoms [1]. Its design is largely inspired by previous works done by the groups of D. Pritchard [2], A. Zeilinger [3] and S.A. Lee [4]. In our apparatus, the atomic wave is diffracted in the Bragg regime by three laser sanding waves to achieve a Mach-Zehnder configuration. This paper briefly recalls the diffraction process and shows the experimental results obtained in our group. Our apparatus is able to achieve a high fringe contrast of 74 % with a large mean detected atom flux of 1.5times1041.5 \\times 10^{4}1.5times104s−1^{-1}−1. Finally, the paper ends with the measurement of the velocity distribution of our lithium beam using a light induced fluorescence technique.\n
We have built and operated an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type. The atomic wave is a supersonic beam of lithium seeded in argon and the mirrors and beam-splitters for the atomic wave are based on elastic Bragg diffraction on laser standing waves at 671 nm. We give here a detailed description of our experimental setup and of the procedures used to align its components. We then present experimental signals, exhibiting atomic interference effects with a very high visibility, up to 84.5 %. We describe a series of experiments testing the sensitivity of the fringe visibility to the main alignment defects and to the magnetic field gradient.
\nWe have built an atom interferometer of the Mach Zehnder type. The\natomic wave (lambdaitdB=54\\lambda_{\\it dB}=54lambdaitdB​=54 pm) is a supersonic beam of\nlithium seeded in argon. The realization of mirrors and beams\nsplitters for the atomic wave relies on elastic Bragg diffraction on\nlaser standing waves at lambda=671\\lambda= 671lambda=671 nm. We first present our\nexperimental setup and signals with atomic fringes which exhibit a\nvery high visibility, up to 84.5pm184.5 \\pm 1 \\%84.5pm1, and a very large phase\nsensitivity. This phase sensitivity is then used to perform an\nabsolute measurement of the lithium atom electric polarizability by\napplying an electric field on only one atomic beam in the\ninterferometer. Our result, $\\alpha= (24.33 \\pm 0.16) \\times\n10^{-30}$ m3^33, reduces by a factor three the uncertainty of the\nbest previous measurement.\n
We demonstrate an atom interferometer that uses a laser-cooled continuous beam of 87Rb atoms having velocities of 10–20 m/s. With spatially separated Raman beams to coherently manipulate the atomic wave packets, Mach–Zehnder interference fringes are observed at an interference distance of 2L = 19 mm. The apparatus operates within a small enclosed area of 0.07 mm2 at a bandwidth of 190 Hz with a deduced sensitivity of 7.8×10−5 rad/s/Hz for rotations. Using a low-velocity continuous atomic source in an atom interferometer enables high sampling rates and bandwidths without sacrificing sensitivity and compactness, which are important for applications in real dynamic environments.
We have developed a Mach-Zehnder atom interferometer which uses elastic diffraction of lithium atom on laser standing waves for the coherent manipulation of the atom wave. The interference signal is of sufficient quality to achieve a phase sensitivity near 10 milliradians/. With this apparatus, we have recently measured the index of refraction of several gases for lithium waves. The interference signals give access to the real and imaginary parts of () and we have tested the linear dependence of these two quantities with gas density. The measured values of () are in good agreement with calculations and they exhibit glory oscillations, as predicted by theory.
Atom interferometers are very sensitive to accelerations and rotations. This property, which has some very interesting applications, induces a deleterious phase noise due to the seismic noise of the laboratory and this phase noise is sufficiently large to reduce the fringe visibility in many experiments. We develop a model calculation of this phase noise in the case of Mach-Zehnder atom interferometers and we apply this model to our thermal lithium interferometer. We are able to explain the observed phase noise which has been detected through the rapid dependence of the fringe visibility with the diffraction order. We think that the dynamical model developed in the present paper should be very useful to reduce the vibration induced phase noise in atom interferometers, making many new experiments feasible.