Generalized gravity-gradient mitigation scheme

Abstract

A major challenge in high-precision light-pulse atom interferometric experiments such as in tests of the weak equivalence principle is the uncontrollable dependency of the phase on initial velocity and position of the atoms in the presence of inhomogeneous gravitational fields. To overcome this limitation, mitigation strategies have been proposed, however, valid only for harmonic potentials or only for small branch separations in more general situations. Here we provide a mitigation formula for anharmonic perturbation potentials including local gravitational effects that vary on length scales much smaller than the spatial extent probed by the atoms and originate, e.g., from buildings that surround the experiment. Furthermore, our results are applicable to general interferometer geometries with arbitrary branch separation and allow for compensation of Coriolis effects in rotating reference frames.

References in corpus (5)

• Measurement of the fine-structure constant as a test of the Standard Model
• Testing General Relativity with Atom Interferometry
• Quantum Test of the Universality of Free Fall
• Testing Gravity with Cold-Atom Interferometers
• Testing the universality of free fall with rubidium and ytterbium in a very large baseline atom interferometer