paper

A supersolid-based gravimeter in a ring cavity

arXiv:1812.04001 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.190801

Abstract

We propose a novel type of composite light-matter interferometer based on a supersolid-like phase of a driven Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to a pair of degenerate counterpropagating electromagnetic modes of an optical ring cavity. The supersolid-like condensate under the influence of the gravity drags the cavity optical potential with itself, thereby changing the relative phase of the two {cavity electromagnetic fields}. Monitoring the phase evolution of the cavity output fields thus allows for a nondestructive measurement of the gravitational acceleration. We show that the sensitivity of the proposed gravimeter exhibits Heisenberg-like scaling with respect to the atom number. As the relative phase of the cavity fields is insensitive to photon losses, the gravimeter is robust against these deleterious effects. For state-of-the-art experimental parameters, the relative sensitivity of such a gravimeter could be of the order of -- for a condensate of a half a million atoms and interrogation time of the order of a few seconds.

arXiv commentaccepted PRL version (referees' comments incorporated)

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