Atom Interferometry with up to 24-Photon-Momentum-Transfer Beam Splitters

Abstract

We present up to 24-photon Bragg diffraction as a beam splitter in light-pulse atom interferometers to achieve the largest splitting in momentum space so far. Relative to the 2-photon processes used in the most sensitive present interferometers, these large momentum transfer beam splitters increase the phase shift 12-fold for Mach-Zehnder (MZ-) and 144-fold for Ramsey-Borde (RB-) geometries. We achieve a high visibility of the interference fringes (up to 52% for MZ or 36% for RB) and long pulse separation times that are possible only in atomic fountain setups. As the atom's internal state is not changed, important systematic effects can cancel.

New introduction. 4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Atom Interferometry tests of the isotropy of post-Newtonian gravity
• Atom-wave diffraction between the Raman-Nath and the Bragg regime: Effective Rabi frequency, losses, and phase shifts
• Fast high--voltage amplifiers for driving electro-optic modulators

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