Atomic gravimeter robust to environmental effects

Abstract

Atomic accelerometers and gravimeters are usually based on freely-falling atoms in atomic fountains, which not only limits their size, but also their robustness to environmental factors such as tilts, magnetic fields or vibrations. Such limitations have precluded their broad adoption in the field, for geophysics, geology, and inertial navigation. More recently, atom interferometers based on holding atoms in an optical lattice have been developed. Such gravimeters also suppress the influence of vibrations in the frequency range of ~1 Hz and above by several orders of magnitude relative to conventional atomic gravimeters. Here, we show that such interferometers are robust to tilts of more than 8 mrad with respect to the vertical and can suppress the effect of even strong environmental magnetic fields and field gradients by using atoms in the F=3,4 hyperfine ground states as co-magnetometers, potentially eliminating the need for shielding. We demonstrate gravimeter sensitivity of $0.7\mathrm{mGal}/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ ($1\mathrm{mGal}=10\mu {m/s}^2$) in a compact geometry where atoms only travel over mm of space.

arXiv comment9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (16)

• Measurement of the fine-structure constant as a test of the Standard Model
• A Fermi-degenerate three-dimensional optical lattice clock
• Gravity surveys using a mobile atom interferometer
• High-accuracy inertial measurements with cold-atom sensors
• Navigation-compatible hybrid quantum accelerometer using a Kalman filter
• Probing gravity by holding atoms for 20 seconds
• Hybridizing matter-wave and classical accelerometers
• Improving the accuracy of atom interferometers with ultracold sources
• A Compact Cold-Atom Interferometer with a High Data-Rate Grating Magneto-Optical Trap and a Photonic-Integrated-Circuit-Compatible Laser System
• Local gravity measurement with the combination of atom interferometry and Bloch oscillations
• A trapped atom interferometer with ultracold Sr atoms
• A scalable high-performance magnetic shield for Very Long Baseline Atom Interferometry
• Compact active vibration isolation and tilt stabilization for a portable high-precision atomic gravimeter
• Composite-fringe atom interferometry for high dynamic-range sensing
• Bespoke magnetic field design for a magnetically shielded cold atom interferometer
• Atomic gravimeter robust to environmental effects

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Measuring gravity by holding atoms
• Atomic gravimeter robust to environmental effects