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Optical and Quantum Sensing and Precision Metrology II

Hafele and Keating on a chip: Sagnac interferometry with a single clock

Jamie J. Johnson, Bethany Foxon, Vilius Atkočius, Fabio Gentile, Sindhu Jammi, Konstantinos Poulios, T. Fernholz

Published Feb 25, 2020• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We describe our progress in the development of an atom based rotation sensor, which employs state-dependent trapping potentials to transport ultracold atoms along a closed path and perform Sagnac interferometry. Whilst guided atom interferometers are sought after to build miniaturized devices that overcome size restrictions from free-falling atoms, fully trapped interferometers also remove free-propagation along an atomic waveguide. This provides additional control of motion, e.g. removing wave-packet dispersion and enabling operation that remains independent of external acceleration. Our experimental scheme relies on radio-frequency and microwave-fields, which are partly generated via atom-chip technology, providing a step towards implementing a small, robust, and eventually portable atomic-gyroscope.

DOI
10.1117/12.2552686

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We describe our progress in the development of an atom based rotation sensor, which employs state-dependent trapping potentials to transport ultracold atoms along a closed path and perform Sagnac interferometry. Whilst guided atom interferometers are sought after to build miniaturized devices that overcome size restrictions from free-falling atoms, fully trapped interferometers also remove free-propagation along an atomic waveguide. This provides additional control of motion, e.g. removing wave-packet dispersion and enabling operation that remains independent of external acceleration. Our experimental scheme relies on radio-frequency and microwave-fields, which are partly generated via atom-chip technology, providing a step towards implementing a small, robust, and eventually portable atomic-gyroscope.
This thesis presents the experimental scheme for a guided cold atom Sagnac interferometer. Although atom interferometers have become an established method for precision measurements, a feasible clock-scheme based on fully guided atoms has yet to be realised. Radio frequency potentials, generated by a chip, provide a means to create a compact, fully controllable guided atom interferometer. The experimental infrastructure for a rubidium cold atom system is built and characterised. A chip-based atomic clock scheme is presented, utilising state-dependent guiding around a ring shaped trap. The chip design to form the trap and operate the interferometer is presented, and a vacuum compatible PCB has been designed and commercially manufactured to provide atomic transport and compression towards an atom chip. This project is part of the larger MatterWave project. In collaboration with Birmingham and Crete, the Matterwave project aims to develop ultra-sensitive matter-wave interferometry for compact devices.
We discuss a scheme to implement a gyroscopic atom sensor with magnetically trapped ultra-cold atoms. Unlike standard light or matter wave Sagnac interferometers no free wave propagation is used. Interferometer operation is controlled only with static, radio-frequency and microwave magnetic fields, which removes the need for interferometric stability of optical laser beams. Due to the confinement of atoms, the scheme may allow the construction of small scale portable sensors. We discuss the main elements of the scheme and report on recent results and efforts towards its experimental realization.
The Sagnac effect enables interferometric measurements of rotation with high precision. Using matter waves instead of light promises resolution enhancement by orders of magnitude that scales with particle mass. So far, the paradigm for matter wave Sagnac interferometry relies on de Broglie waves and thus on free propagation of atoms either in free fall or within waveguides. However, the Sagnac effect can be expressed as a proper time difference experienced by two observers moving in opposite directions along closed paths and has indeed been measured with atomic clocks flown around Earth. Inspired by this, we investigate an interferometer comprised of a single atomic clock. The Sagnac effect manifests as a phase shift between trapped atoms in different internal states after transportation along closed paths in opposite directions, without any free propagation. With analytic models, we quantify limitations of the scheme arising from atomic dynamics and finite temperature. Furthermore, we suggest an implementation with previously demonstrated technology.
Matter-wave interferometry with atoms propagating in a guiding potential is expected to provide compact, scalable and precise inertial sensing. However, a rotation sensing device based on the Sagnac effect with atoms guided in a ring has not yet been implemented despite continuous efforts during the last two decades. Here we discuss some intrinsic effects that limit the coherence in such a device and propose a scheme that overcomes these limitations and enables a multi-pass guiding Sagnac interferometer with a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) on a chip in a ring potential. We analyze crucial dephasing effects: potential roughness, phase diffusion due to atom-atom interactions and number uncertainty, and phase fluctuations. Owing to the recent progress in achieving high momentum beam splitting, creating smooth guides, and manipulating the matter-wavepacket propagation, guided interferometry can be implemented within the coherence time allowed by phase diffusion. Despite the lower particle flux in a guided Sagnac ring and the miniaturization of the interferometer, the estimated sensitivity, for reasonable and practical realizations of an atom chip-based gyroscope, is comparable to that of free-space interferometers, reaching 45 nrads^{-1}Hz^{-1/2}. A significant improvement over state-of-the-art free-space gyrocope sensitivities can be envisioned by using thermal atoms instead of a BEC, whereby the interferometer can be operated in a continuous fashion with the coherence limited by the scattering rate of the atoms with the background gas. Taking into account the sensitivity times length of the interferometer as the figure of merit which takes into account compactness, our configuration is expected to deliver a potential improvement of 2-4 orders of magnitude over state-of-the-art free-space gyroscopes for a BEC, and 4-6 orders of magnitude for thermal atoms.
We propose to develop a new generation of compact high sensitivity gyroscopes using guided matter-waves on atom chips, able to fulfill the requirements of metrological applications. They will be designed to overcome the main limitations of free falling atoms interferometers: interrogation time and quantum projection noise. A cloud of cold 87Rb atoms will be coherently split and constrained to propagate along a circular guide of a few millimeters radius. At the output of the guide an interference signal sensitive to rotation via the Sagnac effect will be measured.
This thesis describes the experimental realisation of state-dependent traps employing RF-dressed adiabatic potentials. Rb-87 atoms have been successfully confined to chip-based atom traps that can independently address atomic ground states defined by the total angular momentum, F. The ring-shaped trap can be used as a Sagnac interferometer to measure rotation with respect to the inertial frame of reference. The results of spatially dependent radio frequency field polarisation control in this trap resulted in counterpropagating motion of the atoms in the F = 1 and F = 2 states.