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arXiv:physics/0405010 · Physical Review Letters

Bloch Oscillations of Ultracold Atoms: A Tool for a Metrological Determination of h/mRb

Rémy Battesti, Pierre Cladé, Saïda Guellati-Khélifa, Catherine Schwob, Benoît Grémaud, F. Nez, Lucile Julien, F. Biraben

Published Jun 22, 2004• 101 citations
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Abstract

We use Bloch oscillations in a horizontal moving standing wave to transfer a large number of photon recoils to atoms with a high efficiency (99.5% per cycle). By measuring the photon recoil of 87Rb, using velocity-selective Raman transitions to select a subrecoil velocity class and to measure the final accelerated velocity class, we have determined h/m(Rb) with a relative precision of 0.4 ppm. To exploit the high momentum transfer efficiency of our method, we are developing a vertical standing wave setup. This will allow us to measure h/m(Rb) better than 10(-8) and hence the fine structure constant alpha with an uncertainty close to the most accurate value coming from the (g-2) determination.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.92.253001

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We use Bloch oscillations in a horizontal moving standing wave to transfer a large number of photon recoils to atoms with a high efficiency (99.5% per cycle). By measuring the photon recoil of 87Rb, using velocity-selective Raman transitions to select a subrecoil velocity class and to measure the final accelerated velocity class, we have determined h/m(Rb) with a relative precision of 0.4 ppm. To exploit the high momentum transfer efficiency of our method, we are developing a vertical standing wave setup. This will allow us to measure h/m(Rb) better than 10(-8) and hence the fine structure constant alpha with an uncertainty close to the most accurate value coming from the (g-2) determination.
We show that Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice are a strong tool to measure accurately some physical constants. We describe in this paper two experimental approaches using a pure and an accelerated vertical standing waves to perform respectively a determination of the local acceleration of gravity ggg to ppm precision and of the fine structure constant α\alphaα with a relative uncertainty of 6,7 ppb.
We report an accurate measurement of the recoil velocity of 87Rb atoms based on Bloch oscillations in a vertical accelerated optical lattice. We transfer about 900 recoil momenta with an efficiency of 99.97% per recoil. A set of 72 measurements of the recoil velocity, each one with a relative uncertainty of about 33 ppb in 20 min integration time, leads to a determination of the fine structure constant with a statistical relative uncertainty of 4.4 ppb. The detailed analysis of the different systematic errors yields to a relative uncertainty of 6.7 ppb. The deduced value of alpha-1 is 137.035 998 78(91).
We use Bloch oscillations to transfer coherently many photon momenta to atoms. Then we can measure accurately the recoil velocity ℏk/m\hbar k/mℏk/m and deduce the fine structure constant ααα. The velocity variation due to Bloch oscillations is measured using atom interferometry. This method yields to a value of the fine structure constant α−1=137.03599945(62)α^{-1}= 137.035 999 45 (62)α−1=137.03599945(62) with a relative uncertainty of about 4.5×10−94.5 \times 10^{-9}4.5×10−9.