A Compact Cold-Atom Interferometer with a High Data-Rate Grating Magneto-Optical Trap and a Photonic-Integrated-Circuit-Compatible Laser System

Abstract

The extreme miniaturization of a cold-atom interferometer accelerometer requires the development of novel technologies and architectures for the interferometer subsystems. Here we describe several component technologies and a laser system architecture to enable a path to such miniaturization. We developed a custom, compact titanium vacuum package containing a microfabricated grating chip for a tetrahedral grating magneto-optical trap (GMOT) using a single cooling beam. In addition, we designed a multi-channel photonic-integrated-circuit-compatible laser system implemented with a single seed laser and single sideband modulators in a time-multiplexed manner, reducing the number of optical channels connected to the sensor head. In a compact sensor head containing the vacuum package, sub-Doppler cooling in the GMOT produces 15 uK temperatures, and the GMOT can operate at a 20 Hz data rate. We validated the atomic coherence with Ramsey interferometry using microwave spectroscopy, then demonstrated a light-pulse atom interferometer in a gravimeter configuration for a 10 Hz measurement data rate and T = 0 - 4.5 ms interrogation time, resulting in $\Delta$ g / g = 2.0e-6. This work represents a significant step towards deployable cold-atom inertial sensors under large amplitude motional dynamics.

21 pages, 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Invited Review: Micro-fabricated components for cold atom sensors
• Enhancing the sensitivity of atom-interferometric inertial sensors using robust control
• Trapped atoms and superradiance on an integrated nanophotonic microring circuit
• High-Performance Silicon Photonic Single-Sideband Modulators for Cold Atom Interferometry
• Demonstration of a programmable optical lattice atom interferometer
• Grating magneto-optical traps with complicated level structures
• Atomic gravimeter robust to environmental effects
• Bose-Einstein-condensate source on an optical-grating-based atom chip for quantum sensor applications
• Optimal binary gratings for multi-wavelength magneto-optical traps
• Single-beam grating-chip 3D and 1D optical lattices
• Integration of a high-fidelity model of quantum sensors with a map-matching filter for quantum-enhanced navigation
• Magneto-optical trap performance for high-bandwidth applications
• Micro-integrated crossed-beam optical dipole trap system with long-term alignment stability for mobile atomic quantum technologies
• Single-Beam Magneto-Optical Trap in Back-to-Back Pyramidal and Conical Mirrors
• Adaptive, symmetry-informed Bayesian metrology for precise quantum technology measurements
• Digital stabilization of an IQ modulator in the carrier suppressed single side-band (CS-SSB) mode for atom interferometry
• An atomic Fabry-Perot interferometer-based acceleration sensor for microgravity environments
• $T^{-3}$-shift in a short-baseline atomic interferometer-gravimeter
• MACOR glass-ceramic based UHV cell for quantum technology applications