Measurement of g with an atom interferometer

David E. Pritchard

P. D. Featonby, C. L. Webb, R. M. Lake +4 more

Atom interferometers provide a unique way in which to study atomic de Broglie waves. A number of atom interferometers have now been developed which demonstrate the wave nature of atoms and these have been used for various precision measurements [1], Many of these interferometers use light forces to manipulate the de Broglie waves.

David E. Pritchard

Wen-Jie Xu, Jie Liu, Qin Luo +2 more

Wavefront aberrations have significant impacts on the accuracy and long-term stability of cold-atom interferometers. This research presents an in situ method for directly measuring the phase shift induced by the wavefront of the Raman beam using the atom interferometer itself. To validate the feasibility of this approach, experiments involving the insertion of a glass plate with a known surface figure into the Raman beam path have been carried out. The phase introduced by the glass plate is measured experimentally by the atom interferometer and calculated theoretically based on the wavefront obtained from the wavefront sensor, and we find good agreement of the experimental results with the theoretical calculations. The method not only allows for the assessment of systematic errors in an atom interferometer, but also provides the capability to retroactively compute the wavefront of Raman beams based on the measured phase shift. The wavefront distribution of the glass plate is inversed from the phase measured by the atom interferometer. This inversed wavefront distribution is consistent with the surface of the glass plate measured by the wavefront sensor, which confirms the effectiveness of the method. This work provides a valuable approach to evaluate the systematic errors in atom interferometers that are sensitive to wavefront aberrations. Furthermore, it offers a novel method to measure the wavefront using atoms.

Steven Chu, David S. Weiss, Brent C. Young

Zhu Chang-Xing, Feng Yan-Ying, Xiongying Ye +4 more

In the paper，a measurement method of absolute rotation of atom interferometer is proposed. Generally，there are π/2-π-π/2 phase gratings in an atom interferometer in the space domain. We add three special phases to the three gratings，then，we modulate the special phases to change the detector signal of atom interferometer，and Fourier transform is performed on the detector signal，to obtain the absolute rotation of atom interferometer. The results are the discussed in the paper.