Mobile and remote inertial sensing with atom interferometers

Abstract

The past three decades have shown dramatic progress in the ability to manipulate and coherently control the motion of atoms. This exquisite control offers the prospect of a new generation of inertial sensors with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy, which will be important for both fundamental and applied science. In this article, we review some of our recent results regarding the application of atom interferometry to inertial measurements using compact, mobile sensors. This includes some of the first interferometer measurements with cold 39 K atoms, which is a major step toward achieving a transportable, dual-species interferometer with rubidium and potassium for equivalence principle tests. We also discuss future applications of this technology, such as remote sensing of geophysical effects, gravitational wave detection, and precise tests of the weak equivalence principle in Space.

Underground operation at best sensitivity of the mobile LNE-SYRTE cold atom gravimeter

“…In particular, the low noise environment allowed the CAG to reach an unprecedented short term sensitivity when operating without any vibration isolation system. ‡ Present adress: LKB, CNRS, UPMC, UMR 8552, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France † MIGA: Matter wave-laser Interferometry Gravitation Antenna [8] http://www.materwave-antenna.org…”

Influence of separating distance between atomic sensors for gravitational wave detection

“…1 using the sensitivity function, and explain why some kinds of noise such as vibrational noise will be suppressed, but without affecting the signal arising from a gravitational wave. The sensitivity function is suggested firstly by Dick [17,18], and then investigated in detail by others [19][20][21][22] with a time-domain atomic interferometer [23], which quantifies the influence of a relative laser phase shift δφ occurring at a time t during the interferometer sequences on the transition probability δP (δφ, t); it is then defined in Ref. [17,18] as…”

Hybridizing matter-wave and classical accelerometers

“…These possibilities are already exploited in absolute cold atom gravimetry 1 , where record sensitivities have been demonstrated 2,3 . In the mean time, developments have been conducted in order to simplify and reduce the size of such devices to be compliant with these applications [4][5][6] . One of the main remaining difficulties comes from the intrinsic low frequency sampling, in the order of 1 Hz, of the vibration noise in cold atom devices.…”