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Chinese Optics Letters

Vibration compensation of an atom gravimeter

Aopeng Xu, Delong Kong, Zhijie Fu, Zhaoying Wang, Qiang Lin

Published Jan 1, 2019• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

For most atom interferometers, the vibration isolation unit is applied to reduce vibration noise. In our experiment, instead of isolation, the vibration signals are monitored, and combining with the sensitive function, the compensation phase shift for the atom interferometer is obtained. We focus on the correction over a wide spectrum rather than on "monochromatic" frequencies. The sensitivity of the atom gravimeter can be upgraded by a factor of more than two. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the atom interferometer can still produce a good measurement result without passive vibration isolation in extremely noisy environments by using vibration compensation.

DOI
10.3788/col201917.070201

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For most atom interferometers, the vibration isolation unit is applied to reduce vibration noise. In our experiment, instead of isolation, the vibration signals are monitored, and combining with the sensitive function, the compensation phase shift for the atom interferometer is obtained. We focus on the correction over a wide spectrum rather than on "monochromatic" frequencies. The sensitivity of the atom gravimeter can be upgraded by a factor of more than two. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the atom interferometer can still produce a good measurement result without passive vibration isolation in extremely noisy environments by using vibration compensation.
We present an ultrahigh-sensitivity gravimeter based on an 87{}^{87}87Rb atom interferometer using stimulated Raman transitions. Compared with our previous work, a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap is added in the new gravimeter to increase the atom number and improve the detection signal-to-noise ratio, and a better optical phase-locked loop system is used to reduce the phase noise of Raman beams. Benefiting from these efforts and the excellent performance of the active vibration isolator, a short-term sensitivity of about 4.2 $\ensuremath{\mu}\text{Gal}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ ($1\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{Gal}=1\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}8}$ m/s2\text{m}/{\text{s}}^{2}m/s2) is reached, which improves the sensitivity by a factor of 2 compared with the former best reported value. By a modulation experiment, we further indicate that the residual vibration noise contribution is about 1.2 $\ensuremath{\mu}\text{Gal}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$, which implies a possible improvement over the present absolute gravity measurement level by about one order of magnitude. Moreover, we demonstrate a calibration experiment to directly evaluate the sub-$\ensuremath{\mu}$Gal resolution of our gravimeter.
A dual-atom-interferometer gyroscope has high sensitivity for accurate rotation measurements because of its immunity to common-mode noise. However, a measurement error is induced as the common phase noise, e.g., vibration noise, increases. In this work, we demonstrated a real-time compensation (RTC) scheme to improve the accuracy of measurements of the differential phase in dual atom interferometers. The vibration noise was measured by two seismometers and its induced phase shift was fed back to the Raman lasers after this shift was calculated based on the sensitivity function of the atom interferometers. After the RTC module was applied, the interference signals obtained via the square modulation method were stabilized at their midfringe points, which caused the vibration-induced phase noise for each of the atom interferometers to decrease from 495 mrad to 165 mrad. The differential phase error obtained by the dual atom interferometers and two seismometers was reduced from 114.8 mrad to 49.6 mrad, which implies that the rotation measurement error was improved by a factor of 2.3. This work paves the way to accurately measuring the rotation signal and has promising applications in fields of precision measurements.
Exploiting the quantum nature of atoms through the use of matter-wave interferometry has lead to the development of devices sensitive to, among other things, the local gravitational acceleration. Measurements of the gravitational acceleration have applications ranging from detection of subterranean density di erences to observation of general relativistic e ects. Light-pulse atom interferometers provide an absolute measurement of the gravitational acceleration with a sensitivity competitive and even surpassing the performance of classical sensors. The advantages of atom interferometers as inertial measurement devices have lead to e orts in increasing sensitivity and decreasing the physical dimensions of the measurement head, allowing them to be more transportable for eld use applications. With increasing sensitivity, it becomes more critical to address the noise source limitations a ecting the measurement, speci cally the in uence of ground motion on measurements. Vibrations coupling into the inertial reference add a time varying phase shift uncommon to the paths of the interferometer. This limitation is especially pertinent to transportable atom gravimeters measuring in the eld where inertial noise is typically far higher than in relatively quiet laboratory environments. Within this work, implementation and demonstration of inertial noise post-correction in an atom interferometer is shown within low inertial noise environments and simulated strong motion environments. For a high pulse separation time atom interferometer (T = 78 ms) post-correction yielded an increase in the short term stability from 4.4 x 10 ̄6 m/s2/√Hz to 9.2 x 10 ̄7 m/s2/√Hz. This method was reproduced with a di erent motion sensor to perform post-correction in a high motion environment, generated by introducing additional movement onto the inertial reference. By performing post-correction in the high motion environment, we were able to show an increase of short term stability of γ = 73.8. Current limitations to the post-correction resulted from self noise resolution limitations and spectral resolutions limitations. Beyond corrections with commercially available sensors, this work demonstrates the rst post-correction with a next generation compact optomechanical sensor. This optomechanical sensor is formed from monolithic fused silica capable of sensitively measuring accelerations of a harmonic oscillator test mass, which can be read-out optically. This novel motion sensor has the advantage to any previously shown sensor used for post-correction in the capacity that it is vacuum compatible, insensitive to magnetic elds and has the potential to be implemented directly into the inertial reference. In this work, inertial noise post-correction in a simulated high motion environment is shown, correcting from a short term stability of 8 x 10 ̄3 m/s2/√Hz to 5 x 10 ̄4 m/s2/√Hz. Post-correction was limited by the parasitic cavities within the ber required for optical read-out of the harmonic oscillator displacement and intensity noise uctuations of the source laser. The results shown within this work are congruent with previous works on atom chip gravimeters, both of which help move towards portable hand-held gravimeter measurement heads capable of sensitive inertial measurement.
Measuring low-frequency and ultra-low-frequency vibration signals is of critical importance in fields such as structural mechanics, geological exploration, aerospace, precision machining, and biomedicine. Existing methods face limitations in achieving both ultra-low-frequency range and high precision. We present an ultra-low-frequency vibration measurement method based on the atom interferometer, capable of measuring vibration signals from 0.01 Hz to DC. The performance of measurement was experimentally demonstrated for vibrations between 0.007 Hz and 0.01 Hz, achieving a sensitivity of 1.1 μm/s2/Hz. Incorporating active vibration isolation can further enhance the measurement range, increasing the optimal sensitivity to 0.2 μm/s2/Hz.
The gravimeter based on atom interferometry has potentially wide applications on building the gravity networks, geophysics as well as gravity assisted navigation. Here, we demonstrate experimentally a portable atom gravimeter operating in the noisy urban environment. Despite the influence of noisy external vibrations, our portable atom gravimeter reaches a sensitivity as good as 65 uGal/\sqrt{Hz} and a resolution of 1.1 uGal after 4000 s integration time, being comparable to state-of-the-art atom gravimeters. Our achievement paves the way for bring the portable atom gravimeter to field applications, such as gravity survey on a moving platform.
In atom interferometry the phase evolution of a quantum superposition state is measured with respect to a reference signal. The measurement has a limited unambiguous interval, since not the phase but its projection is measured as a population unbalance on two energetic levels. Resolving phase wrapping brings to a longer interrogation interval and hence instrument sensitivity. We extended the unambiguous probe interval using coherence preserving measurements and phase corrections, and demonstrated the phase lock of the clock oscillator to an atomic superposition state. On this basis we implemented a protocol to improve atomic clocks limited by local oscillator noise, which is the case of optical atomic clocks, nowadays the best frequency standard in terms of both accuracy and precision. The technique could be adopted to enhance the sensitivity of atomic gravimeters.