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Velocity Multiplexing for Precision Atom Interferometry

Martin V. Tiberg

Published Jan 1, 2001• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Velocity multiplexing is a new tool of atom interferometry, which allows large dispersive interactions to be studied without total loss of contrast. This thesis describes a new velocity multiplexing scheme based on electrostatics, which achieves a factor of four improvement in intensity and a factor of two improvement in the Signal to Noise Ratio compared to previously proposed schemes. For the first time, velocity multiplexing has also been implemented and tested. The data is in good agreement with the new theory developed in this thesis. 4

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Velocity multiplexing is a new tool of atom interferometry, which allows large dispersive interactions to be studied without total loss of contrast. This thesis describes a new velocity multiplexing scheme based on electrostatics, which achieves a factor of four improvement in intensity and a factor of two improvement in the Signal to Noise Ratio compared to previously proposed schemes. For the first time, velocity multiplexing has also been implemented and tested. The data is in good agreement with the new theory developed in this thesis. 4
A new technique for maintaining high contrast in an atom interferometer is used to measure large de Broglie wave phase shifts. Dependence of an interaction induced phase on the atoms' velocity is compensated by applying an engineered counterphase. The counterphase is equivalent to a rotation, is precisely determined by a frequency, and can be used to measure phase shifts due to interactions of unknown strength. Phase shifts of 150 rad (5 times larger than previously possible) have now been measured in an atom beam interferometer, and we suggest that this technique can enable comparisons of atomic polarizability with precision of one part in 10,000.
This dissertation describes new measurements of the van der Waals (vdW) potential energy for atoms near a surface. The measurements presented here were accomplished by studying diffraction a beam of atoms transmitted through a nanograting. I will describe how we improved precision by a factor of 10 over previous diffraction measurements by studying how different types of atoms interact with the same surface. As a result of this new precision, we were able to show for the first time the contribution of atomic core electrons to the atom-surface potential, and experimentally test different atomic structure calculation methods.In addition, this dissertation will describe how changing the width of the grating bars to achieve a particular "magic" grating bar width or rotating a grating to a particular "magic" angle allows us to determine both the atom-surface potential strength and the geometry of the grating. This represents an improvement over several recent studies where uncertainties in the nanograting geometry limited precision in the measurements of the vdW potential.For a complementary measurement, also discussed in this dissertation, we collaborated with the Vigue group in Toulouse, France. In this collaboration we used an atom interferometer to measure the phase shift due to transmission through a nanograting. By combining diffraction data from Tucson with interferometry data from Toulouse we improved the precision of interferometry measurements of the atom-surface potential of a single atomic species by almost a factor of 10 over previous interferometric measurements of the vdW potential. These interferometry measurements also serve to measure the shape of the vdW potential and set a limit on non-Newtonian gravitational interactions at 1-2 nm length scales.Finally, this dissertation will discuss how nanogratings with optimized geometry can improve atom interferometers, for example, with blazed gratings. We discuss next generation atom-surface potential measurements and examine new ways of analyzing diffraction data.
The basic physical principles behind atom interferometers based on optical pulses of light are summarized. This method of atom interferometry is based on measurements in the time and frequency domain and is an inherently precise measurement technique. After a brief discussion of some of the important technical requirements for good fringe accuracy and visibility, we describe an interferometer that has measured the acceleration of an atom due to gravity with a resolution better than one part in 1010. We project that the absolute accuracy of our measurement will be of the order of a few parts in 109. We also describe an interferometer experiment that measures the recoil energy shift of an atom when it absorbs a photon. When combined with the value of the Rydberg constant and the mass ratios MCs/mp and mp/me, one can obtain a value for α, the fine structure constant. Currently, we have an experimental resolution Δα/α ∼ 10-8 after two hours of integration time and are studying the systematic effects that affect the measurement.
Atom interferometry is a powerful metrological tool that has been developed over the last few decades. Large momentum transfer (LMT) methodsmanipulate atomic trajectories with tens or hundreds of photon momenta\nin order to increase sensitivity. This thesis furthers progress towards using\nLMT methods in next-generation atom interferometers. One main result establishes symmetric Bloch oscillations as a new, viable technique for LMT.\nTheory and numerics are used to show how the process is coherent and\nadiabatic, and experimentally we demonstrate coherence in an interferometer with up to 240¯hk, where ¯hk is the momentum of a single photon of\n852nm light. This was the second largest coherent momentum splitting\ndemonstrated at at the time of publication. The rest of the thesis focuses\non design and construction of a new atomic fountain to measure the fine\nstructure constant α. Discrepancies in recent measurements of α [67, 55]\nare currently limiting theory predictions for the electron gyromagnetic ratio\n[25] - an improved measurement of α is therefore highly motivated and would\nenable an improved test of the consistency of the Standard Model. Previously, our group published a measurement of α at the 0.2 ppb level in 2018\n[67]. We built a new experiment with a goal of improving the measurement\nby a factor of 3-10. Much of the thesis focuses on systematic effects related\nto spatial intensity inhomogeneities on the laser beam, which are some of\nthe hardest to characterize systematic effects looking forward. A large clear\naperture vacuum chamber accommodates larger waist laser beams without\nclipping on chamber walls. In addition, a high-speed, user-friendly Monte\nCarlo simulation package was made to predict experimental systematic shifts\nin the measured value of α due to laser beam inhomogeneities.
Precision tilt measurements are becoming more and more important in fundamental research and crustal deformation observations. A quantum tiltmeter based on atom interferometry could be among the most stable tiltmeters in theory but is currently constrained by the low resolution. Here, we demonstrate an extremely sensitive quantum tiltmeter with the configuration of a Mach-Zehnder-type atom interferometer for precisely measuring the crustal deformation. The scheme of two pairs of Raman beams sharing one retroreflection mirror effectively increases the scale factor, making this quantum tiltmeter achieve a sensitivity of 40nrad/Hz1/240\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nrad}/{\mathrm{Hz}}^{1/2}40nrad/Hz1/2 and a resolution of 1.8 nrad within an integration time of 640 s for tilt measurements, which represents an improvement on the sensitivity by a factor of 32 comparing to previous work. The Earth tilt tide lasting for 63 h has been observed with high signal-to-noise ratio by our quantum tiltmeter, which paves the way to study the crustal deformation with a quantum sensor.