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Physical Review A

Improved frequency-shift gravity-gradient compensation on canceling the Raman-pulse-duration effect in atomic gravimeters

Yajie Wang, Xiao-Yu Lu, Yu-Jie Tan, Cheng-Gang Shao, Zhong-Kun Hu

Published Nov 5, 2018• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Although frequency-shift gravity-gradient compensation is currently the technique with the most potential to test the weak equivalence principle with atom interferometry at high precision, it faces an unavoidable obstacle on how to cancel the coupling between the Raman-pulse-duration effect and the gravity gradient related to the atomic initial kinematics. According to the Einstein equivalence principle, we develop a method to calculate this coupling effect in a space-stretching free-falling frame, based on which an improved frequency-shift gravity-gradient compensation technique is put forward to make high-accuracy weak-equivalence-principle tests with the microscopic particles, such as at the level of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}14}$, more possible.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.98.053604

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Although frequency-shift gravity-gradient compensation is currently the technique with the most potential to test the weak equivalence principle with atom interferometry at high precision, it faces an unavoidable obstacle on how to cancel the coupling between the Raman-pulse-duration effect and the gravity gradient related to the atomic initial kinematics. According to the Einstein equivalence principle, we develop a method to calculate this coupling effect in a space-stretching free-falling frame, based on which an improved frequency-shift gravity-gradient compensation technique is put forward to make high-accuracy weak-equivalence-principle tests with the microscopic particles, such as at the level of 10\ensuremath−14{10}^{\ensuremath{-}14}10\ensuremath−14, more possible.
Gravity gradients represent a major obstacle in high-precision measurements by atom interferometry. Controlling their effects to the required stability and accuracy imposes very stringent requirements on the relative positioning of freely falling atomic clouds, as in the case of precise tests of Einstein's equivalence principle. We demonstrate a new method to exactly compensate the effects introduced by gravity gradients in a Raman-pulse atom interferometer. By shifting the frequency of the Raman lasers during the central π pulse, it is possible to cancel the initial position- and velocity-dependent phase shift produced by gravity gradients. We apply this technique to simultaneous interferometers positioned along the vertical direction and demonstrate a new method for measuring local gravity gradients that does not require precise knowledge of the relative position between the atomic clouds. Based on this method, we also propose an improved scheme to determine the Newtonian gravitational constant G towards the 10 ppm relative uncertainty.
In an ideal test of the equivalence principle, the test masses fall in a common inertial frame. A real experiment is affected by gravity gradients, which introduce systematic errors by coupling to initial kinematic differences between the test masses. Here we demonstrate a method that reduces the sensitivity of a dual-species atom interferometer to initial kinematics by using a frequency shift of the mirror pulse to create an effective inertial frame for both atomic species. Using this method, we suppress the gravity-gradient-induced dependence of the differential phase on initial kinematic differences by 2 orders of magnitude and precisely measure these differences. We realize a relative precision of Δg/g≈6×10^{-11} per shot, which improves on the best previous result for a dual-species atom interferometer by more than 3 orders of magnitude. By reducing gravity gradient systematic errors to one part in 10^{13}, these results pave the way for an atomic test of the equivalence principle at an accuracy comparable with state-of-the-art classical tests.
Abstract With the rapid development of atom interference technology, multi-loop atom interferometers are widely used in the high-precision measurement of various physical constants and testing of various gravity-related effects. However, in ground-based multi-loop atom interference experiments, the systematic error contribution by classical effects is an important factor that affects the experimental measurement accuracy and gravitational effect detection. Based on this, we used the atomic wave-function evolution-phase accumulation method to provide a high-order interference phase of multi-loop atom interferometers in an inhomogeneous gravitational field containing Earth’s rotation. Furthermore, we propose a new scheme that combines optimised frequency-shift compensation technology with an improved pulse sequence to eliminate systematic errors due to the gravity gradient, Earth’s rotation, and their coupling effect with the pulse duration, as well as the coupling effect of laser detuning with the pulse duration. This study lays a theoretical foundation for experiments on multi-loop atom interferometers with higher precision.
Atom interferometry tests of universality of free fall based on the differential measurement of two different atomic species provide a useful complement to those based on macroscopic masses. However, when striving for the highest possible sensitivities, gravity gradients pose a serious challenge. Indeed, the relative initial position and velocity for the two species need to be controlled with extremely high accuracy, which can be rather demanding in practice and whose verification may require rather long integration times. Furthermore, in highly sensitive configurations gravity gradients lead to a drastic loss of contrast. These difficulties can be mitigated by employing wave packets with narrower position and momentum widths, but this is ultimately limited by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. We present a promising scheme that overcomes these problems by compensating the effects of the gravity gradients and circumvents the fundamental limitations due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Furthermore, it relaxes the experimental requirements on initial colocation by several orders of magnitude.
The effect of the Raman-pulse duration related to the magnetic field gradient, as a systematic error, is playing an important role on evaluating the performance of high-precision atomic gravimeters. We study this effect with a simplified theoretical model of the time-propagation operator. According to the typical parameters, we find that this effect should be taken into account when the gravimeter reaches an accuracy of 10 −10 g, and the larger the pulse duration is, the more obvious the systematic effect will be. Finally, we make a simple discussion on the possibility of testing this effect.
For high-precision atom interferometry gravimeters, the effect of the Raman pulse duration will become an appreciable fraction and need to be taken into account. Its influence has been reported considering a homogeneous Earth’s gravitational field in some previous works. In this paper, by decomposing the time evolution operator into two parts, the free evolution part and the interaction part, we develop an approach to study this effect in a realistic situation where the Earth’s gravitational field is inhomogeneous. A mathematic expression for the interferometer phase shift because of the Raman pulse duration effect is obtained, which shows that the Raman pulse duration should be taken into account when the gravimeter reaches an accuracy of 10−10 g.