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Sensors

Advances in Portable Atom Interferometry-Based Gravity Sensing

Jamie Vovrosh, Andrei Dragomir, Ben Stray, Daniel Boddice

Published Sep 4, 2023• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Gravity sensing is a valuable technique used for several applications, including fundamental physics, civil engineering, metrology, geology, and resource exploration. While classical gravimeters have proven useful, they face limitations, such as mechanical wear on the test masses, resulting in drift, and limited measurement speeds, hindering their use for long-term monitoring, as well as the need to average out microseismic vibrations, limiting their speed of data acquisition. Emerging sensors based on atom interferometry for gravity measurements could offer promising solutions to these limitations, and are currently advancing towards portable devices for real-world applications. This article provides a brief state-of-the-art review of portable atom interferometry-based quantum sensors and provides a perspective on routes towards improved sensors.

DOI
10.3390/s23177651

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Zhongguo kexue. Wulixue Lixue Tianwenxue•May 27, 2021•1 citation
Gravity sensing is a valuable technique used for several applications, including fundamental physics, civil engineering, metrology, geology, and resource exploration. While classical gravimeters have proven useful, they face limitations, such as mechanical wear on the test masses, resulting in drift, and limited measurement speeds, hindering their use for long-term monitoring, as well as the need to average out microseismic vibrations, limiting their speed of data acquisition. Emerging sensors based on atom interferometry for gravity measurements could offer promising solutions to these limitations, and are currently advancing towards portable devices for real-world applications. This article provides a brief state-of-the-art review of portable atom interferometry-based quantum sensors and provides a perspective on routes towards improved sensors.
With over 20 years of development, atomic interferometry gravimeters have distinguished themselves in gravity measurements by their high precision and sensitivity. To cater to the demands of field absolute gravity measurements for marine and aerial gravity field measurements, resource exploration, inertial navigation, and positioning, the miniaturization, mobility, and engineering of atomic interferometry gravimeters have become crucial areas of development. On this basis, this article elucidates the principles of atomic interferometry gravimeters, encompassing various laser cooling techniques, magneto-optical traps, and Raman light interference. As a matter of fact, it provides an overview of the principles and achieved precision benchmarks of portable, vehicular, airborne, and shipborne atomic interferometry gravimeters. Additionally, it analyzes the experimental content and results of maritime, terrestrial, and aerial experiments based on portable atomic interferometry gravimeters. The limitations of portable atomic interferometry gravimeters are discussed, along with an exploration of their application prospects. Overall, these results shed light on guiding further exploration of mobile atom interferometry gravity.
Gravity plays a central role in our understanding of the Earth and the Universe. It is the dominant force at astronomic scales, shaping star systems and galaxies. It is also a pivotal field in the geosciences, allowing access to the physical shape of the Earth, defining height systems, and tracking mass transport, for example water in climate change research, inside volcanoes, or along seismic faults. Finally, it could become a crucial resource for engineering, opening the way to a renewal of underground exploration techniques, both for natural resources and civil engineering legacy. In fundamental physics, gravity nevertheless remains a riddle. From its origins to the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015, the theory of general relativity has accumulated successes. Our understanding of the microscopic world, through quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics is a similar success story, culminating with the detection of the BEH boson in 2012. Nevertheless, unification theories remain inaccessible and testing both the hypotheses and predictions of our theories remains the safest way towards the discovery of new physics. Here, key research areas relate to tests of the universality of free fall, at the heart of general relativity theory, or the creation of macroscopic superposition states of massive particles, a genuine marker of the quantum world. Novel applications in the geosciences also require improved gravity sensors. For multiple applications in engineering and geodesy, the ideal device is easily transportable and has low energy consumption. Nevertheless, higher-order references are necessary to enable an accurate definition of a gravity standard across the world. Such gravity references could also be combined with state-of-the-art laser gyroscopes into quantum Earth observatories. In this manuscript, we introduce a new generation of matter wave sensors based on very long baseline atom interferometry (VLBAI). Exploring the properties of massive quantum objects at the scales of meters and seconds, they will provide new insights into fundamental physics questions and serve as testbeds for novel atomic inertial sensors on ground and in space. We provide the motivation and working principles for absolute gravity sensing with VLBAI, and discuss in particular the specific trade-offs arising from the use of an extended baseline in atom interferometry. We also present the core design of the Hannover VLBAI facility. Finally, we demonstrate that through a unique and carefully characterized 10 m-long magnetically shielded baseline, this devices offers the required environment for next-generation atomic gravity reference sensors and tests of fundamental physics.
The remarkable success of atom coherent manipulation techniques has motivated competitive research and development in precision metrology. Matter-wave inertial sensors – accelerometers, gyrometers, gravimeters – based on these techniques are all at the forefront of their respective measurement classes. Atom inertial sensors provide nowadays about the best accelerometers and gravimeters and allow, for instance, to make the most precise monitoring of gravity or to device precise tests of the weak equivalence principle (WEP). I present here some recent advances in these fields.
Atomic gravimetry measures the gravitional acceleration of an ensemble of identical neutral atoms through the atom interferometry based on Raman two-photon transition, where the Raman lasers are used as “optical ruler" and the identical neutral atoms play the role of test mass and quantum storage of gravity field information. As the novel gravimetry system suffers no mechanical wear and works at a higher repetition rate, atom gravimetry can reach a much better short-term sensitivity than the classical falling-corner-cube counterpart, and the accuracy is reasonably well. Since the very first in-laboratory device built over 30 years ago, atomic gravimetry has matured to a versatile tool that offers both precise and accurate absolute gravity measurement to fundamental research and metrology, such as testing the weak equivalence principle or linking the mass and weight of the test mass in Watt (Kibble) balance. As the current rapid development of compact cold-atom gravimeters, atomic gravimetry is moving out of the laboratory to be used as a quantum enhancement of classical devices in dynamical measurement, such as geophysics survey, inertial navigation and space mission. We review the roadmap for the development of cold-atom absolute gravimetry, highlight recent advances in the dynamical measurement using compact cold atom gravimeters and discuss the associated technological challenges. In the future, with the maturity of its application in dynamical measurement or civil engineering and the innovation in atom interferometry theory, atomic gravimetry could play a more and more important role in our life.