Cold atom interferometers for inertial sensors based on Raman transitions

Arnaud Landragin

F. Yver, Arnaud Landragin, N. Dimarcq +6 more

We build a cold atom interferometer to be used as high precision inertial sensor. Our setup is sensitive both to rotations and accelerations. The interferometer configuration is similar to an optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and it uses stimulated Raman transitions to manipulate the atomic wave packets (total interferometer time of 90 ms).

Arnaud Landragin

B. Canuel, Florence Leduc, David Holleville +6 more

The authors are developing a high precision inertial sensor. This device uses cold Caesium atoms manipulated by stimulated Raman transitions (Berman, 1997). As this setup is sensitive to both acceleration and rotation, two counter-propagating beams of cold atoms are used to discriminate between the two contributions. The last experimental results will be presented here

Jin Wang, Lin Zhou, Runbing Li +2 more

Wang Ping, Runbing Li, Hui Yan +2 more

Cold-matter-wave Sagnac interferometers possess many advantages over their thermal atomic beam counterparts when they are used as precise inertial sensors. We report a realization of a Sagnac-type interferometer with cold atoms. Cold rubidium atoms are prepared in a magneto-optical trap and are pushed by resonant laser pulse to form slow atomic beam. In the interference region, atomic wave packets are coherently manipulated using π/2−π−π/2 Raman pulse sequences. Interference fringes with maximum contrast of 37% are observed experimentally.