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Journal de Physique IV (Proceedings)

Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms: A tool for metrological measurements

Pierre Cladé, Malo Cadoret, Estefania de Mirandés, Saïda Guellati-Khélifa, Catherine Schwob, F. Nez, Lucile Julien, F. Biraben

Published Oct 1, 2006• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice are a strong tool to measure accurately some physical constants. We describe in this paper two experimental approaches using a pure and an accelerated vertical standing waves to perform respectively a determination of the local acceleration of gravity $g$ to ppm precision and of the fine structure constant $\alpha$ with a relative uncertainty of 6,7 ppb.

DOI
10.1051/jp4:2006135002

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arXiv:physics/0605018•Physical Review Letters•Aug 9, 2006•264 citations
We show that Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice are a strong tool to measure accurately some physical constants. We describe in this paper two experimental approaches using a pure and an accelerated vertical standing waves to perform respectively a determination of the local acceleration of gravity ggg to ppm precision and of the fine structure constant α\alphaα with a relative uncertainty of 6,7 ppb.
We use Bloch oscillations in a horizontal moving standing wave to transfer a large number of photon recoils to atoms with a high efficiency (99.5% per cycle). By measuring the photon recoil of 87Rb, using velocity-selective Raman transitions to select a subrecoil velocity class and to measure the final accelerated velocity class, we have determined h/m(Rb) with a relative precision of 0.4 ppm. To exploit the high momentum transfer efficiency of our method, we are developing a vertical standing wave setup. This will allow us to measure h/m(Rb) better than 10(-8) and hence the fine structure constant alpha with an uncertainty close to the most accurate value coming from the (g-2) determination.
An obvious determination of the local acceleration of gravity g can be deduced from the measurement of the velocity of falling atoms using a π-π pulses sequence of stimulated Raman transitions. By using a vertical standing wave to hold atoms against gravity, we expect to improve the relative accuracy by increasing the upholding time in the gravity field and to minimize the systematic errors induced by inhomogeneous fields, owing to the very small spatial amplitude of the atomic center-of-mass wavepacket periodic motion. We also propose to use such an experimental setup nearby a Watt balance. By exploiting the g / h ( h is the Planck constant) dependence of the Bloch frequency, this should provide a way to link a macroscopic mass to an atomic mass.
We report an accurate measurement of the recoil velocity of 87Rb atoms based on Bloch oscillations in a vertical accelerated optical lattice. We transfer about 900 recoil momenta with an efficiency of 99.97% per recoil. A set of 72 measurements of the recoil velocity, each one with a relative uncertainty of about 33 ppb in 20 min integration time, leads to a determination of the fine structure constant with a statistical relative uncertainty of 4.4 ppb. The detailed analysis of the different systematic errors yields to a relative uncertainty of 6.7 ppb. The deduced value of alpha-1 is 137.035 998 78(91).
We report on a precision measurement of gravitational acceleration using ultracold strontium atoms confined in an amplitude-modulated vertical optical lattice. An uncertainty Δg/g ≈ 10(-7) is reached by measuring at the 5th harmonic of the Bloch frequency. The value obtained with this microscopic quantum system is consistent with the one measured with a classical gravimeter. Using lattice modulation to prepare the atomic sample, we also achieve high visibility of Bloch oscillations for ∼ 20 s. These results can be of relevance for testing gravitational redshift and Newtonian law at micrometer scale.
We report on the observation of Bloch oscillations on the unprecedented time scale of several seconds. The experiment is carried out with ultracold bosonic 88Sr atoms loaded into a vertical optical standing wave. The negligible atom-atom elastic cross section and zero angular momentum in the ground state makes 88Sr an almost ideal Bose gas, insensitive to typical mechanisms of decoherence due to thermalization and external stray fields. The small size of the system enables precision measurements of forces at micrometer scale. This is a challenge in physics for studies of surfaces, Casimir effects, and searches for deviations from Newtonian gravity predicted by theories beyond the standard model.