Point source atom interferometry with a cloud of finite size

Published

August 19, 2016

Author(s)

Gregory W. Hoth, Bruno M. Pelle, Stefan Riedl, John E. Kitching, Elizabeth A. Donley

Abstract

We demonstrate a two axis gyroscope by use of light pulse atom interferometry with an expanding cloud of atoms in the regime where the cloud has expanded by 1.1 to 5 times its initial size during the interrogation. Rotations are measured by analyzing spatial fringe patterns in the atom population obtained by imaging the final cloud. The fringes arise from a correlation between an atom's initial velocity and its final position. This correlation is naturally created by the expansion of the cloud, but it also depends on the initial atomic distribution. We show the frequency and contrast of these fringes depend on the details of the initial distribution and develop an analytical model to explain this dependence. We estimate that an optimized system based on this technique could achieve navigation grade performance with an active evacuated volume $

Citation

Applied Physics Letters

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

atom interferometer, compact sensor, gyroscope, inertial navigation, scale factor

Citation

Hoth, G. , Pelle, B. , Riedl, S. , Kitching, J. and Donley, E. (2016), Point source atom interferometry with a cloud of finite size, Applied Physics Letters (Accessed December 3, 2024)