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Conference on Precision Electromagnetic Measurements

A cold atom interferometer for high precision inertial measurements

B. Canuel, Florence Leduc, David Holleville, N. Dimarcq, Andr  Clairon, J. Fils, Philippe Bouyer, Ch. J. Bordé, Arnaud Landragin

Published Jun 1, 2004• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The authors are developing a high precision inertial sensor. This device uses cold Caesium atoms manipulated by stimulated Raman transitions (Berman, 1997). As this setup is sensitive to both acceleration and rotation, two counter-propagating beams of cold atoms are used to discriminate between the two contributions. The last experimental results will be presented here

DOI
10.1109/cpem.2004.305486

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The authors are developing a high precision inertial sensor. This device uses cold Caesium atoms manipulated by stimulated Raman transitions (Berman, 1997). As this setup is sensitive to both acceleration and rotation, two counter-propagating beams of cold atoms are used to discriminate between the two contributions. The last experimental results will be presented here
Cold atom free-fall interferometers now realize state-of-the-art precision inertial sensors, opening perspectives towards embedded devices for applications and fundamental physics tests on earth and in space. The acceleration of gravity can be measured in a stimulated Raman transition interferometer where the acceleration under gravity of a cloud of freely falling atoms is sensed by three Raman pulses allowing to split, reflect and interfere atomic wave packets [1]. The gravimeter developped at SYRTE allows to measure the acceleration of gravity at state-of-the-art performances compared to the best classical absolute gravimeters, with a sensitivity of 2×10−8g over 1s and an exactitude of 5×10−9 g [2]. This exactitude is currently limited by wavefront aberrations of the lasers, sampled by residual transverse trajectories of the molasse-cooled cloud over the free fall. Unbalanced transverse trajectories will also bias the measurement due to Coriolis effect [3]. We will investigate the use of a colder atom source to reduce these systematic effects, by implementing Bose-Einstein condensation of the initial cloud, allowing both better position control and better focusing of our source.
Atom interferometry has hugely benefitted from advances made in cold atom physics over the past twenty years, and ultra-precise quantum sensors are now available for a wide range of applications [1]. In particular, cold atom interferometers have shown excellent performances in the field of acceleration and rotation measurements [2,3], and are foreseen as promising candidates for navigation, geophysics, geo-prospecting and tests of fundamental physics such as the Universality of Free Fall (UFF). In order to carry out a test of the UFF with atoms as test masses, one needs to compare precisely the accelerations of two atoms with different masses as they fall in the Earth’s gravitational field. The sensitivity of atom interferometers scales like the square of the time during which the atoms are in free fall, and on ground this interrogation time is limited by the size of the experimental setup to a fraction of a second. Sending an atom interferometer in space would allow for several seconds of excellent free-fall conditions, and tests of the UFF could be carried out with precisions as low as 10-15 [4]. However, cold atoms experiments rely on complex laser systems, which are needed to cool down and manipulate the atoms, and these systems are usually very sensitive to temperature fluctuations and vibrations. In addition, when operating an inertial sensor, vibrations are a major issue, as they deteriorate the performances of the instrument. This is why cold atom interferometers are usually used in ground based facilities, which provide stable enough environments. In order to carry out airborne or space-borne measurements, one has to design an instrument which is both compact and stable, and such that vibrations induced by the platform will not deteriorate the sensitivity of the sensor. We report on the operation of an atom interferometer on board a plane carrying out parabolic flights (Airbus A300 Zero-G, operated by Novespace). We have constructed a compact and stable laser setup, which is well suited for onboard applications. Our goal is to implement a dual-species Rb-K atom interferometer in order to carry out a test of the UFF in the plane. In this perspective, we are designing a dual-wavelength laser source, which will enable us to cool down and coherently manipulate the quantum states of both atoms. We have successfully tested a preliminary version of the source and obtained a double species magneto-optical trap (MOT).
In the paper the authors present an atomic gyroscope for the precise measurement of rotations based on optical Raman transitions for the coherent beam splitting process. Two interferometers with overlapping counter propagating atomic trajectories are used to distinguish between rotation and acceleration. Furthermore, we report on the present status of the apparatus including the analysis of systematic effects, which lead to the current limitation of the sensor. Finally, future improvements based on the provided analysis of the sensor will be discussed.