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Lithium atom interferometer using laser diffraction : description and experiments

Alain Miffre, Marion Jacquey, M Büchner, G. Trénec, J. Vigué

Published Oct 22, 2004• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have built and operated an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type. The atomic wave is a supersonic beam of lithium seeded in argon and the mirrors and beam-splitters for the atomic wave are based on elastic Bragg diffraction on laser standing waves at 671 nm. We give here a detailed description of our experimental setup and of the procedures used to align its components. We then present experimental signals, exhibiting atomic interference effects with a very high visibility, up to 84.5 %. We describe a series of experiments testing the sensitivity of the fringe visibility to the main alignment defects and to the magnetic field gradient.

DOI
10.1140/epjd/e2005-00011-3

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We have built and operated an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type. The atomic wave is a supersonic beam of lithium seeded in argon and the mirrors and beam-splitters for the atomic wave are based on elastic Bragg diffraction on laser standing waves at 671 nm. We give here a detailed description of our experimental setup and of the procedures used to align its components. We then present experimental signals, exhibiting atomic interference effects with a very high visibility, up to 84.5 %. We describe a series of experiments testing the sensitivity of the fringe visibility to the main alignment defects and to the magnetic field gradient.
\nWe have built an atom interferometer of the Mach-Zehnder type, operating with thermal lithium atoms [1]. Its design is largely inspired by previous works done by the groups of D. Pritchard [2], A. Zeilinger [3] and S.A. Lee [4]. In our apparatus, the atomic wave is diffracted in the Bragg regime by three laser sanding waves to achieve a Mach-Zehnder configuration. This paper briefly recalls the diffraction process and shows the experimental results obtained in our group. Our apparatus is able to achieve a high fringe contrast of 74 % with a large mean detected atom flux of 1.5times1041.5 \\times 10^{4}1.5times104s−1^{-1}−1. Finally, the paper ends with the measurement of the velocity distribution of our lithium beam using a light induced fluorescence technique.\n
\nWe have built an atom interferometer of the Mach Zehnder type. The\natomic wave (lambdaitdB=54\\lambda_{\\it dB}=54lambdaitdB​=54 pm) is a supersonic beam of\nlithium seeded in argon. The realization of mirrors and beams\nsplitters for the atomic wave relies on elastic Bragg diffraction on\nlaser standing waves at lambda=671\\lambda= 671lambda=671 nm. We first present our\nexperimental setup and signals with atomic fringes which exhibit a\nvery high visibility, up to 84.5pm184.5 \\pm 1 \\%84.5pm1, and a very large phase\nsensitivity. This phase sensitivity is then used to perform an\nabsolute measurement of the lithium atom electric polarizability by\napplying an electric field on only one atomic beam in the\ninterferometer. Our result, $\\alpha= (24.33 \\pm 0.16) \\times\n10^{-30}$ m3^33, reduces by a factor three the uncertainty of the\nbest previous measurement.\n
We have developed a Mach-Zehnder atom interferometer which uses elastic diffraction of lithium atom on laser standing waves for the coherent manipulation of the atom wave. The interference signal is of sufficient quality to achieve a phase sensitivity near 10 milliradians/. With this apparatus, we have recently measured the index of refraction of several gases for lithium waves. The interference signals give access to the real and imaginary parts of () and we have tested the linear dependence of these two quantities with gas density. The measured values of () are in good agreement with calculations and they exhibit glory oscillations, as predicted by theory.
Light pulses have proven to be a powerful and versatile tool to implement beam splitters and mirrors for matter waves enabling atom interferometers. However, for high-precision measurements with such devices the specific realization is crucial and novel techniques might increase the sensitivity. To illustrate the diversity of light-pulse beam splitting and the subtle differences between the diffraction mechanisms, we study atomic Raman, Bragg, and the new method of double Bragg diffraction in a coherent way. Moreover, we introduce a versatile formalism to determine the interference signal of a Mach-Zehnder geometry and give an interpretation in terms of proper-time difference. In addition, we explore the feasibility of a specular mirror for atoms, which might lead to an interferometer testing the equivalence principle.