The transition efficiency of atomic Bragg diffraction as mirrors and beam splitters in Bragg atom interferometers plays an essential role in impacting the fringe contrast and measurement sensitivity. This can be attributed to the properties of atomic sources, Bragg pulse shapes, the pulse duration, and the relative position deviation of the atoms and Bragg pulses. Here, we investigate the effect of the atomic source's diffusion and velocity width on the efficiency of Bragg diffraction of the moving cold atomic cloud. The transfer efficiency of Bragg mirrors and beam splitters are numerically simulated and experimentally measured, which are well consistent in comparison. We quantify these effects of atomic diffusion and velocity width and precisely compute how Bragg pulses' efficiencies vary as functions of these parameters. Our results and methodology allow us to optimize the Bragg pulses at different atomic sources and will help in the design of large momentum transfer mirrors and beam splitters in atom interferometry experiments.
The transition efficiency of atomic Bragg diffraction as mirrors and beam splitters in Bragg atom interferometers plays an essential role in impacting the fringe contrast and measurement sensitivity. This can be attributed to the properties of atomic sources, Bragg pulse shapes, the pulse duration, and the relative position deviation of the atoms and Bragg pulses. Here, we investigate the effect of the atomic source's diffusion and velocity width on the efficiency of Bragg diffraction of the moving cold atomic cloud. The transfer efficiency of Bragg mirrors and beam splitters are numerically simulated and experimentally measured, which are well consistent in comparison. We quantify these effects of atomic diffusion and velocity width and precisely compute how Bragg pulses' efficiencies vary as functions of these parameters. Our results and methodology allow us to optimize the Bragg pulses at different atomic sources and will help in the design of large momentum transfer mirrors and beam splitters in atom interferometry experiments.
We theoretically consider the effect of the atomic source's momentum width on the efficiency of Bragg mirrors and beamsplitters and, more generally, on the phase sensitivity of Bragg pulse atom interferometers. By numerical optimization, we show that an atomic cloud's momentum width places a fundamental upper bound on the maximum transfer efficiency of a Bragg mirror pulse, and furthermore limits the phase sensitivity of a Bragg pulse atom interferometer. We quantify these momentum width effects, and precisely compute how mirror efficiencies and interferometer phase sensitivities vary as functions of Bragg order and source type. Our results and methodology allow for an efficient optimization of Bragg pulses and the comparison of different atomic sources, and will help in the design of large momentum transfer Bragg mirrors and beamsplitters for use in atom-based inertial sensors.
In this paper, we theoretically investigate how the momentum width of an atomic source affects the efficiency of Bragg beam splitters and mirrors. We conclude that narrow momentum width sources, such as atom lasers, are significantly more efficient than atomic clouds with a larger momentum width, such as thermal sources, for high (but accessible) order Bragg processes. The development of large momentum transfer (LMT) mirrors and beam splitters is one of the most promising paths leading to increased precision in future sensors based on atom interferometry. This makes these results significant, because the signal to noise ratio of an interferometric measurement scales linearly with the momentum imparted in the beam splitting processes and scales as the square root of the atomic flux.
We present up to 24-photon Bragg diffraction as a beam splitter in light-pulse atom interferometers to achieve the largest splitting in momentum space so far. Relative to the 2-photon processes used in the most sensitive present interferometers, these large momentum transfer beam splitters increase the phase shift 12-fold for Mach-Zehnder (MZ) and 144-fold for Ramsey-Bordé (RB) geometries. We achieve a high visibility of the interference fringes (up to 52% for MZ or 36% for RB) and long pulse separation times that are possible only in atomic fountain setups. As the atom's internal state is not changed, important systematic effects can cancel.
We experimentally and theoretically study Bragg diffraction as a tool for large-momentum transfer beam splitters in atom interferometry. A theoretical framework is developed to quantify the diffraction phase systematic caused by Bragg diffraction and experiments are performed to confirm these predictions using a Ramsey-Bord\\'e atom interferometer. We then develop methods to systematically cancel and reduce the diffraction phase systematic by carefully selecting Bragg diffraction parameters and utilizing Bloch oscillations. These techniques are then applied to an ongoing precision measurement of $h/m_\\text{Cs}$ for cesium, with the end goal of measuring the fine structure constant alpha. We demonstrate a high contrast simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bord\\'e interferometer using 5th order Bragg diffraction and 25 common mode Bloch oscillations which achieves 2.5times106 radians of phase. We also demonstrate an interferometer with a statistical uncertainty of deltaalpha/alpha=0.25 ppb after 25 hours of integration time that has diffraction phase systematic error of around 1 ppb. Other sources of systematic uncertainty are also thoroughly explored and determined to better than 0.1 ppb. The techniques and theories developed in this thesis will hopefully help enable future precision measurements based on Bragg diffraction.
Abstract Multi-photon Bragg diffraction is a powerful method for fast, coherent momentum transfer of atom waves. However, laser noise, Doppler detunings, and cloud expansion limit its efficiency in large momentum transfer (LMT) pulse sequences. We present simulation studies of robust Bragg pulses developed through numerical quantum optimal control. Optimized pulse performance under noise and cloud inhomogeneities is analyzed and compared to analogous Gaussian and adiabatic rapid passage pulses in simulated LMT Mach–Zehnder interferometry sequences. The optimized pulses maintain robust population transfer and phase response over a broader range of noise, resulting in superior contrast in LMT sequences with thermal atom clouds and intensity inhomogeneities. Large optimized LMT sequences use lower pulse area than Gaussian pulses, making them less susceptible to spontaneous emission loss. The optimized sequences maintain over five times better contrast with tens of ℏ k momentum separation and offer more improvement with greater LMT. Such pulses could allow operation of Bragg atom interferometers with unprecedented sensitivity, improved contrast, and hotter atom sources.
This thesis contributes to the debate over the viability of using Bose-condensed sources to improve the sensitivity of atom interferometers. Specifically, we present theoretical investigations into (1) the effect of source momentum width on large momentum transfer (LMT) atom interferometry with Bragg pulses, and (2) the prospect of stabilising a high flux, narrow linewidth, continuously pumped atom laser via measurement-based feedback control of the BEC that forms the lasing mode of the atom laser. To begin, this thesis considers the effect of the atomic source's momentum width on the phase sensitivity of Bragg pulse atom interferometers in the Mach-Zehnder configuration. We show that an atomic cloud's momentum width places a fundamental upper bound on the maximum transfer efficiency of a Bragg mirror pulse, and furthermore limits the phase sensitivity of a Bragg pulse atom interferometer. We quantify these momentum width effects and precisely compute how mirror efficiencies and interferometer phase sensitivities vary as functions of Bragg order and source type. In particular, we show that narrow momentum width Bose-condensed sources give comparable sensitivities to broad momentum width thermal sources, even after incorporating the lower atom flux of Bose-condensed sources. Coupled with other favourable properties of Bose-condensed sources, such as their high tolerance to classical noise due to optical wavefront aberrations and the Coriolis effect, this suggests that LMT Bragg atom interferometry with Bose-condensed sources should yield improved sensitivities over current inertial sensors. Furthermore, our results and methodology allow for the efficient optimisation of Bragg pulses, which will help in the design of LMT Bragg mirrors and beamsplitters for atom-interferometer-based inertial sensors, irrespective of source type. In the second part of this thesis, we investigate the prospect of measurement-based feedback control of a BEC, with the aim of reducing density fluctuations by cooling the condensate to a stable spatial mode. Firstly, we consider the effects of experimental imperfections on the estimation-based feedback control of a weakly-interacting BEC undergoing continuous position measurement. These limitations violate the assumption that the estimator (i.e., filter) accurately models the underlying system, thus requiring a separate analysis of the system and filter dynamics. We show that the control scheme is robust to detector inefficiency, time delay, technical noise and miscalibrated parameters. These results imply that reasonable experimental imperfections do not limit the feasibility of cooling a BEC by continuous measurement and feedback. Secondly, we designed a feedback-control scheme for a trapped condensate, with interatomic interactions of any strength, based on a phase-contrast imaging setup. We derive the filtering equation for the system, and show that it gives a continuous measurement of the condensate's density. A semiclassical analysis of this control scheme shows that feedback-cooling of an interacting BEC is also possible, and that the interatomic interactions actually increase the effectiveness of the control. Therefore, measurement-based feedback control can stabilise the spatial mode of a BEC, which is a requirement for the high flux, narrow linewidth, continuously pumped atom laser sources that could potentially give inertial measurement sensitivities orders of magnitude beyond current state-of-the-art devices.