On 23rd of January 2017 the first Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in Space was created on-board the sounding rocket mission MAIUS-1. The successful launch marks a major advancement in the effort of performing matter wave interferometry with BECs on space vehicles. Its high BEC-flux enables more than 100 experiments during flight, characterizing the creation of BECs in space, their free evolution, state preparation, and the creation of cold atoms in highly dynamic environments. MAIUS-1 opens a new path towards space borne inertial sensing employing interferometers with high accuracy and sensitivity. Two follow-up missions will investigate dual-species interferometry. Recently several missions were proposed ranging from tests of the universality of free fall to gravimetry. Due to their small initial size and low expansion rates BECs are the ideal source for such an interferometric measurement. The findings of the mission will contribute to the NASA CAL project and BECCAL (NASA and DLR). This research is funded by DLR under grant 50WP1435.
On 23rd of January 2017 the first Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in Space was created on-board the sounding rocket mission MAIUS-1. The successful launch marks a major advancement in the effort of performing matter wave interferometry with BECs on space vehicles. Its high BEC-flux enables more than 100 experiments during flight, characterizing the creation of BECs in space, their free evolution, state preparation, and the creation of cold atoms in highly dynamic environments. MAIUS-1 opens a new path towards space borne inertial sensing employing interferometers with high accuracy and sensitivity. Two follow-up missions will investigate dual-species interferometry. Recently several missions were proposed ranging from tests of the universality of free fall to gravimetry. Due to their small initial size and low expansion rates BECs are the ideal source for such an interferometric measurement. The findings of the mission will contribute to the NASA CAL project and BECCAL (NASA and DLR). This research is funded by DLR under grant 50WP1435.
On 23rd of January 2017 the first Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in Space was created on-board the sounding rocket mission MAIUS-1. The successful launch marks a major advancement in the effort of performing matter wave interferometry with BECs on space vehicles. Its high BEC-flux enables more than 100 experiments during flight, characterizing the creation of BECs in space, their free evolution, state preparation, and the creation of cold atoms in highly dynamic environments. MAIUS-1 opens a new path towards space borne inertial sensing employing interferometers with high accuracy and sensitivity. Two follow-up missions will investigate dual-species interferometry. Recently several missions were proposed ranging from tests of the universality of free fall to gravimetry. Due to their small initial size and low expansion rates BECs are the ideal source for such an interferometric measurement. The findings of the mission will contribute to the NASA CAL project and BECCAL (NASA and DLR). This research is funded by DLR under grant 50WP1435.
On 23rd of January 2017 the first Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in Space was created on-board the sounding rocket mission MAIUS-1. The successful launch marks a major advancement in the effort of performing matter wave interferometry with BECs on space vehicles. Its high BEC-flux enables more than 100 experiments during flight, characterizing the creation of BECs in space, their free evolution, state preparation, and the creation of cold atoms in highly dynamic environments. MAIUS-1 opens a new path towards space borne inertial sensing employing interferometers with high accuracy and sensitivity. Two follow-up missions will investigate dual-species interferometry. Recently several missions were proposed ranging from tests of the universality of free fall to gravimetry. Due to their small initial size and low expansion rates BECs are the ideal source for such an interferometric measurement. The findings of the mission will contribute to the NASA CAL project and BECCAL (NASA and DLR). This research is funded by DLR under grant 50WP1435.
Owing to the low-gravity conditions in space, space-borne laboratories enable experiments with extended free-fall times. Because Bose–Einstein condensates have an extremely low expansion energy, space-borne atom interferometers based on Bose–Einstein condensation have the potential to have much greater sensitivity to inertial forces than do similar ground-based interferometers. On 23 January 2017, as part of the sounding-rocket mission MAIUS- 1, we created Bose–Einstein condensates in space and conducted 110 experiments central to matter-wave interferometry, including laser cooling and trapping of atoms in the presence of the large accelerations experienced during launch. Here we report on experiments conducted during the six minutes of in-space flight in which we studied the phase transition from a thermal ensemble to a Bose–Einstein condensate and the collective dynamics of the resulting condensate. Our results provide insights into conducting cold-atom experiments in space, such as precision interferometry, and pave the way to miniaturizing cold-atom and photon-based quantum information concepts for satellite-based implementation. In addition, space-borne Bose–Einstein condensation opens up the possibility of quantum gas experiments in low-gravity conditions1,2.
In January 2017 a first sounding rocket mission housing experiments on matter-wave interferometry,
MAIUS-1 (Materiewellen-Interferometrie unter Schwerelosigkeit Matter-Wave Interferometry under
Microgravity), has been launched. Following this campaign, two sounding rocket missions, MAIUS-2
and MAIUS-3, are planned to perform sequential and simultaneous dual-species atom interferometry
with Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) of Potassium-41 and Rubidium-87. The scientific payload of the
MAIUS missions will be launched on-board a VSB-30 sounding rocket launched from Esrange in Sweden.
The
ights of these rockets allows for approximately 360 s of microgravity conditions. It therefore overs
a microgravity environment for experiments on timescales not accessible in ground based experiments,
such as in the drop tower.
During ascent of the rocket, vibrational loads of up to 1.8 g RMS in the frequency range of 20-
2000 Hz and accelerations of up to 13 g can occur. Furthermore, static loads, caused by the re-entry
and the landing, can be as high as 50 g. Both missions MAIUS-2 and MAIUS-3
y the same payload,
called MAIUS-B. Consequently, the payload needs to be designed to withstand the aforementioned loads
Bose-Einstein-Condensates (BECs) can be used as a very sensitive tool for experiments on fundamental questions in physics like testing the equivalence principle using matter wave interferometry. Since the sensitivity of these experiments in ground-based environments is limited by the available free fall time, the QUANTUS project started to perform BEC interferometry experiments in micro-gravity. After successful campaigns in the drop tower, the next step is a space-borne experiment. The MAIUS-mission will be an atom-optical experiment that will show the feasibility of experiments with ultra-cold quantum gases in microgravity in a sounding rocket. The experiment will create a BEC of 10(5) (87)Rb-atoms in less than 5 s and will demonstrate application of basic atom interferometer techniques over a flight time of 6 min. The hardware is specifically designed to match the requirements of a sounding rocket mission. Special attention is thereby spent on the appropriate magnetic shielding from varying magnetic fields during the rocket flight, since the experiment procedures are very sensitive to external magnetic fields. A three-layer magnetic shielding provides a high shielding effectiveness factor of at least 1000 for an undisturbed operation of the experiment. The design of this magnetic shielding, the magnetic properties, simulations, and tests of its suitability for a sounding rocket flight are presented in this article.
Ultra-cold quantum gases in space promise to boost the sensitivity of matter-wave interferometers. Applications of the latter extend from fundamental physics over the use in navigation to interdisciplinary applications such as geodesy, e.g. satellite gravimetry [1, 2]. Exploiting quantum gases for high-precision interferometry places high demands on their control and manipulation. We take benefit of various microgravity platforms such as the Bremen drop tower [3], the Einstein elevator in Hannover [4], sounding rockets [5,6] and the international space station [7] to advance the necessary methods. The DLR-mission MAIUS-1 demonstrated Bose-Einstein condensation and performed first interferometry experiments [4]. NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory continues this research in orbit on the ISS [7]. In addition, atom interferometry is pursued in highly dynamic environments such as parabolic flights [8]. Starting from a rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate, recently lowest expansion energies have been achieved by us in the Bremen drop tower as required for extending atom interferometry over several seconds [9]. Extending these methods to quantum mixtures not only opens up new physics in the absence of buoyancy, but also faces challenges regarding their use for interferometry. Interferometers based on two chemical elements have been proposed for quantum tests of the equivalence principle on the ISS as well as on satellites. Currently we prepare a sounding rocket mission to investigate the simultaneous generation and manipulation of potassium and rubidium condensates [10]. Together with CAL [7], these experiments will prepare the DLR-NASA multi-user facility BECCAL for research on quantum gas mixtures and interferometry [11] as well as enhance the readiness level of methods required for STE-QUEST [12], a proposal for a satellite mission currently studied in an modified version within ESA’s VOYAGE 2050 program [13].