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Optics Express

Dependence of the sensitivity on the orientation for a free-fall atom gravimeter

Bin Yang Wu, Dong Zhu, Bing Cheng, Li-Ming Wu, Kainan Wang, Zhaoying Wang, Qing Shu, Rui Li, Helin Wang, Wang Xiaolong, Qiang Lin

Published Apr 8, 2019• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The cold atom absolute gravimeters are intrinsically sensitive to its orientation due to the Coriolis effect, which should be understood clearly and compensated for field applications. The sensitivity on the orientation for a free-fall atom gravimeter is investigated in this paper. The apparatus is simplified and improved a lot such that fast adjustment and measurement could be carried out within 20 minutes. From the experimental results, it is found that the orientation angle has a dominant influence on the absolute gravity measurement, especially when the horizontal velocity of atoms is non-negligible. Besides, the magnitude and direction of average horizontal velocity of the detected atoms are obtained in this experiment. In particular, the direction of East-West has been measured by the atom gravimeter itself, such that gravity bias arising from Coriolis effect is estimated precisely.

DOI
10.1364/oe.27.011252

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The cold atom absolute gravimeters are intrinsically sensitive to its orientation due to the Coriolis effect, which should be understood clearly and compensated for field applications. The sensitivity on the orientation for a free-fall atom gravimeter is investigated in this paper. The apparatus is simplified and improved a lot such that fast adjustment and measurement could be carried out within 20 minutes. From the experimental results, it is found that the orientation angle has a dominant influence on the absolute gravity measurement, especially when the horizontal velocity of atoms is non-negligible. Besides, the magnitude and direction of average horizontal velocity of the detected atoms are obtained in this experiment. In particular, the direction of East-West has been measured by the atom gravimeter itself, such that gravity bias arising from Coriolis effect is estimated precisely.
Cold atom free-fall interferometers now realize state-of-the-art precision inertial sensors, opening perspectives towards embedded devices for applications and fundamental physics tests on earth and in space. The acceleration of gravity can be measured in a stimulated Raman transition interferometer where the acceleration under gravity of a cloud of freely falling atoms is sensed by three Raman pulses allowing to split, reflect and interfere atomic wave packets [1]. The gravimeter developped at SYRTE allows to measure the acceleration of gravity at state-of-the-art performances compared to the best classical absolute gravimeters, with a sensitivity of 2×10−8g over 1s and an exactitude of 5×10−9 g [2]. This exactitude is currently limited by wavefront aberrations of the lasers, sampled by residual transverse trajectories of the molasse-cooled cloud over the free fall. Unbalanced transverse trajectories will also bias the measurement due to Coriolis effect [3]. We will investigate the use of a colder atom source to reduce these systematic effects, by implementing Bose-Einstein condensation of the initial cloud, allowing both better position control and better focusing of our source.
We present here a detailed study of the influence of the transverse motion of the atoms in a free-fall gravimeter. By implementing Raman selection in the horizontal directions at the beginning of the atoms' free fall, we characterize the effective velocity distribution, i.e., the velocity distribution of the detected atom, as a function of the laser cooling and trapping parameters. In particular, we show that the response of the detection induces a pronounced asymmetry of this effective velocity distribution that depends not only on the imbalance between molasses beams but also on the initial position of the displaced atomic sample. This convolution with the detection has a strong influence on the averaging of the bias due to Coriolis acceleration. The present study allows a fairly good understanding of results previously published in [New J. Phys. 13, 065025 (2011)], where the mean phase shift due to Coriolis acceleration was found to have a sign different from that expected.
Limits on the long-term stability and accuracy of a second generation cold atom gravimeter are investigated. We demonstrate a measurement protocol based on four interleaved measurement configurations, which allows rejection of most of the systematic effects, but not those related to Coriolis acceleration and wave-front distortions. Both are related to the transverse motion of the atomic cloud. Carrying out measurements with opposite orientations with respect to the Earth's rotation vector direction allows us to separate the effects and correct for the Coriolis shift. Finally, measurements at different atomic temperatures are presented and analyzed. In particular, we show the difficulty of extrapolating these measurements to zero temperature, which is required in order to correct for the bias due to wave-front distortions.
The alignment of Raman beams is important for high-precision atom interferometry gravimeters, and tilt modulation experiments are usually carried out to calibrate the direction of Raman beams. However, the Coriolis effect could be changed during the tilt modulation experiment, thus introducing a deviation in the alignment of Raman beams. In this work, a method of rotating the sensor head by 90° to eliminate the impact of the Coriolis effect on Raman beams' alignment in a fountain atom gravimeter was proposed and demonstrated experimentally. Using this method, the alignment uncertainty of the Raman beams in the atom gravimeter was reduced to 11 μrad, which contributed an uncertainty of less than 0.1 μGal (1 μGal = 1 × 10-8 m/s2) to the gravity measurement. Further simulations explained the experimental results and pointed out a way to reduce the Coriolis effect in atom gravimeters.
The Coriolis effect can introduce significant systematic errors in atom interferometers. This study examines the coupling effect between the Coriolis effect and the Raman beams–orientation in a fountain atomic gravimeter. Theoretical analysis indicates that the Coriolis effect is correlated with the orientation of the Raman beams, and tilt modulation experiments were conducted to substantiate this correlation. Furthermore, by aligning the orientations of the atomic fountain, the vacuum chamber, and the Raman mirror, we achieved simultaneous suppression of both the Coriolis effect and the tilt effect to sub- μ Gal levels in a high-precision atomic gravimeter. This work offers guidance on assessing systematic errors in high-precision atomic gravimeters.
Atomic gravimetry measures the gravitional acceleration of an ensemble of identical neutral atoms through the atom interferometry based on Raman two-photon transition, where the Raman lasers are used as “optical ruler" and the identical neutral atoms play the role of test mass and quantum storage of gravity field information. As the novel gravimetry system suffers no mechanical wear and works at a higher repetition rate, atom gravimetry can reach a much better short-term sensitivity than the classical falling-corner-cube counterpart, and the accuracy is reasonably well. Since the very first in-laboratory device built over 30 years ago, atomic gravimetry has matured to a versatile tool that offers both precise and accurate absolute gravity measurement to fundamental research and metrology, such as testing the weak equivalence principle or linking the mass and weight of the test mass in Watt (Kibble) balance. As the current rapid development of compact cold-atom gravimeters, atomic gravimetry is moving out of the laboratory to be used as a quantum enhancement of classical devices in dynamical measurement, such as geophysics survey, inertial navigation and space mission. We review the roadmap for the development of cold-atom absolute gravimetry, highlight recent advances in the dynamical measurement using compact cold atom gravimeters and discuss the associated technological challenges. In the future, with the maturity of its application in dynamical measurement or civil engineering and the innovation in atom interferometry theory, atomic gravimetry could play a more and more important role in our life.