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Physical Review A

Atom interferometer using spatially localized beam splitters

Clément Debavelaere, Cyrille Solaro, Saïda Guellati-Khélifa, Pierre Cladé

Published Jul 12, 2024• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A picosecond laser is used to realize atomic beam splitters based on stimulated Raman transitions. With this approach, the interaction between the laser and the atom is localized in the overlap zone of pairs of counterpropagating picosecond pulses. This imposes constraints for implementing interferometers on free-falling atoms. We have developed a robust technique to control the pulses' overlap and ensure that it follows the atom's trajectory while minimizing the induced laser phase noise. We also demonstrate an atom interferometer where the atomic beam splitters are applied to one arm of the interferometer without interacting with the atomic wave packet propagating along the other arm.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.110.013310

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A picosecond laser is used to realize atomic beam splitters based on stimulated Raman transitions. With this approach, the interaction between the laser and the atom is localized in the overlap zone of pairs of counterpropagating picosecond pulses. This imposes constraints for implementing interferometers on free-falling atoms. We have developed a robust technique to control the pulses' overlap and ensure that it follows the atom's trajectory while minimizing the induced laser phase noise. We also demonstrate an atom interferometer where the atomic beam splitters are applied to one arm of the interferometer without interacting with the atomic wave packet propagating along the other arm.
We demonstrate a light-pulse atom interferometer based on the diffraction of free-falling atoms by a picosecond frequency-comb laser. More specifically, we coherently split and recombine wave packets of cold ^{87}Rb atoms by driving stimulated Raman transitions between the |5s ^{2}S_{1/2},F=1⟩ and |5s ^{2}S_{1/2},F=2⟩ hyperfine states, using two trains of picosecond pulses in a counterpropagating geometry. We study the impact of the pulses' length as well as the interrogation time onto the contrast of the atom interferometer. Our experimental data are well reproduced by a numerical simulation based on an effective coupling that depends on the overlap between the pulses and the atomic cloud. These results pave the way for extending light-pulse interferometry to transitions in other spectral regions and therefore to other species, for new possibilities in metrology, sensing of gravito-inertial effects, and tests of fundamental physics.
An atom interferometer based on Doppler-insensitive Raman transition is proposed, which has sharply peaked interference fringes for multi-wave interference. We show that two sets of counter-propagating Doppler-insensitive Raman beam pairs can be used to construct a new type of multi-wave beam splitter, which can be used to construct an atom interferometer. Although the spacing between adjacent diffraction orders of the interferometer is small, they can be distinguished by the internal state of the atom. Our analysis shows that the width of the fringes of this atom interferometer is inversely proportional to the width (duration) of the beam splitter and the Rabi frequency of the Raman beams, that is, the interferometer can achieve high resolution at high light intensity and long pulse width.
We present a methodology for the design of optimal Raman beam-splitter pulses suitable for cold atom inertial sensors. The methodology, based on time-dependent perturbation theory, links optimal control and the sensitivity function formalism in the Bloch sphere picture, thus providing a geometric interpretation of the optimization problem. Optimized pulse waveforms are found to be more resilient than conventional beam-splitter pulses and ensure a near-flat superposition phase for a range of detunings approaching the Rabi frequency. As a practical application, we simulated the performance of an optimized Mach-Zehnder interferometer in terms of scale-factor error and bias induced by interpulse laser intensity variations. Our findings reveal enhancements compared to conventional interferometers operating with constant-power beam-splitter pulses.
Light Pulse Atom lnterferometryLight Pulse Atom Interferometers (LPAI) utilize Raman or Bragg transitions to coherently split, redirect, and recombine atomic wave packets.1In free space LPAIs, light pulses impart momentum kicks to freely expanding cold atomic clouds released from rest.During the atom-light interaction, the laser phase is imprinted onto the atom's wave function.Atoms experience different phase shifts along each interferometer arm which gives us information about their spatial trajectories and thus their local acceleration.The quadratic dependence of the phase shift on the interrogation time, T, have prompted researchers to increase the system's size.For field use, however, smaller compact devices are desired.Guided atom interferometers confine atoms spatially, increasing the interrogation time while minimizing the laser power needed to drive these systems. Beam 4litterIg,p) Mirror
Sodium atoms prepared in hyperfine ground-state 11 > are driven to the other ground-state hyperfine level 12> when two laser beams nearly resonant with an optical transition have a frequency difference equal to the ground-state hyperfine splitting. When the two laser beams are counterpropagating, conservation of momentum between the atom and the light field requires that the atom acquire a velocity kick ~22 ħk/m during the 11> and 12> transition (~6 cm/sec in our experiment). When the lasers are detuned far from the optical transition, spontaneous emission from the intermediate optical level becomes negligible, and the atom behaves as a two-level system coupled to a resonant rf driving field. We have created an interferometer by applying a π/2-π-π/2 Raman pulse sequence: a first π/2 pulse coherently splits the atomic wave packet by putting it in a superposition of states 11> and 12>, a second π pulse occurring a time Δt later redirects each wave packet and a final π/2 pulse recombines the wave packets at time 2Δt. We have observed wave packet interference for wave packet separations of 2.4 mm and, by using the interferometer as an accelerometer, have measured the atom’s acceleration due to gravity to 3 parts in 106.
We present an atom interferometry technique in which the beam splitter is split into two separate operations. A microwave pulse first creates a spin-state superposition, before optical adiabatic passage spatially separates the arms of that superposition. Despite using a thermal atom sample in a small (600 μm) interferometry beam, this procedure delivers an efficiency of 99% per ℏk of momentum separation. Utilizing this efficiency, we first demonstrate interferometry with up to 16ℏk momentum splitting and free-fall limited interrogation times. We then realize a single-source gradiometer, in which two interferometers measuring a relative phase originate from the same atomic wave function. Finally, we demonstrate a resonant interferometer with over 100 adiabatic passages, and thus over 400ℏk total momentum transferred.