An atom interferometer using a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87 Rb atoms is utilized for the measurement of magnetic field gradients. Composite optical pulses are used to construct a spatiallysymmetric Mach-Zehnder geometry. Using a biased interferometer we demonstrate the ability to measure small residual forces in our system and discriminate between magnetic and intertial effects.. These are a residual ambient magnetic field gradient of 15±2 mG/cm and an inertial acceleration of 0.08±0.02 m/s 2 . Our method has important applications in the calibration of precision measurement devices and the reduction of systematic errors.

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The beam attenuation coefficient is a fundamental inherent optical property (IOP) and accurate measurements of attenuation are necessary for input to radiative transfer models. Transmissometers for measuring attenuation are systematically biased by inadvertently collecting light that is scattered in forwards directions within the collection angle of the instrument. Recent experimental work has demonstrated the splitting of coherent, transmitted light into optical vortex modes, leaving the incoherent, forward-scattered light in the vortex null (Alley et al., 2018). We propose that a linear diffraction grating can be used to spatially separate a portion of coherent, unscattered light. We demonstrate experimentally a coherence transmissometer using this concept and compare its performance against that of a standard transmissometer using a traditional lens and pinhole arrangement.