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Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Limits of the separated-path Ramsey atom interferometer

R. M. Godun, C. L. Webb, P. D. Featonby, M. B. d’Arcy, Markus K Oberthaler, G. S. Summy, Christopher J. Foot, Keith R. Burnett

Published Oct 14, 1999• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract. We describe in detail our caesium atom interferometer which uses a combination of microwaves and momentum-changing adiabatic transfer pulses. This combination allows us to achieve spatial separation between the arms of the interferometer. We account for the observed visibility of the resulting interference fringes and find that the effects which contribute the most are optical pumping and magnetic fields. 1.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/32/20/317

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Abstract. We describe in detail our caesium atom interferometer which uses a combination of microwaves and momentum-changing adiabatic transfer pulses. This combination allows us to achieve spatial separation between the arms of the interferometer. We account for the observed visibility of the resulting interference fringes and find that the effects which contribute the most are optical pumping and magnetic fields. 1.
We demonstrate a novel type of cesium atom interferometer which uses a combination of a microwave ground state transition and momentum changing adiabatic transfer light pulses as the atom optical components. It is the first atom interferometer where the mechanism which forms the internal superposition plays no part in spatially splitting the atomic wave packets. The coherence length of the atom source is found by measuring the spatial correlation between the two interferometer arms. This allows us to determine the temperature of the atomic ensemble.
We present an atom interferometry technique in which the beam splitter is split into two separate operations. A microwave pulse first creates a spin-state superposition, before optical adiabatic passage spatially separates the arms of that superposition. Despite using a thermal atom sample in a small (600 μm) interferometry beam, this procedure delivers an efficiency of 99% per ℏk of momentum separation. Utilizing this efficiency, we first demonstrate interferometry with up to 16ℏk momentum splitting and free-fall limited interrogation times. We then realize a single-source gradiometer, in which two interferometers measuring a relative phase originate from the same atomic wave function. Finally, we demonstrate a resonant interferometer with over 100 adiabatic passages, and thus over 400ℏk total momentum transferred.
We have realized an interferometer using a thermal cloud of magnetically trapped rubidium 87 atoms on a chip. The interferometer resembles a Ramsey interferometer with a state selective spatial splitting of the two internal states as proposed in [M. Ammar, and al., Phys. Rev. A, 91, 053623]. The splitting is effected by microwave fields from two on-chip waveguides while the atoms remain magnetically trapped. The inferred maximum separation is 1.2±0.1 μ1.2\pm 0.1~μ1.2±0.1 μm. We observe interference fringes with a contrast around 8\% limited by velocity difference of the two interferometer states when we close the interferometer. We develop a model describing this contrast decay.
An atom interferometer, whose arms are in the different sublevels, was demonstrated using two ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{+}$- and two ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{\ensuremath{-}}$-polarized, copropagating, laser beams in a magnetic field. Using the interferometer, Ramsey fringes with a width of 50 kHz were observed as a function of Zeeman shift frequency. The visibility of the interference fringes of 0.046 was obtained at an excitation power of almost $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$ pulse area.
We present up to 24-photon Bragg diffraction as a beam splitter in light-pulse atom interferometers to achieve the largest splitting in momentum space so far. Relative to the 2-photon processes used in the most sensitive present interferometers, these large momentum transfer beam splitters increase the phase shift 12-fold for Mach-Zehnder (MZ) and 144-fold for Ramsey-Bordé (RB) geometries. We achieve a high visibility of the interference fringes (up to 52% for MZ or 36% for RB) and long pulse separation times that are possible only in atomic fountain setups. As the atom's internal state is not changed, important systematic effects can cancel.
Guided-wave atom interferometers measure interference effects using atoms held in a confining potential. In one common implementation, the confinement is primarily two dimensional, and the atoms move along the nearly free dimension after being manipulated by an off-resonant standing wave laser beam. In this configuration, residual confinement along the nominally free axis can introduce a phase gradient to the atoms that limits the arm separation of the interferometer. We experimentally investigate this effect in detail, and show that it can be alleviated by having the atoms undergo a more symmetric motion in the guide. This can be achieved by either using additional laser pulses or by allowing the atoms to freely oscillate in the potential. With these techniques, we demonstrate interferometer measurement times up to 72ms72\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ms}72ms and arm separations up to 0.42mm0.42\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}0.42mm with a well controlled phase, or times of 0.91s0.91\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{s}0.91s and separations of 1.7mm1.7\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}1.7mm with an uncontrolled phase.