Demonstration of a programmable optical lattice atom interferometer

Abstract

Performing interferometry in an optical lattice formed by standing waves of light offers potential advantages over its free-space equivalents since the atoms can be confined and manipulated by the optical potential. We demonstrate such an interferometer in a one dimensional lattice and show the ability to control the atoms by imaging and reconstructing the wavefunction at many stages during its cycle. An acceleration signal is applied and the resulting performance is seen to be close to the optimum possible for the time-space area enclosed according to quantum theory. Our methodology of machine design enables the sensor to be reconfigurable on the fly, and when scaled up, offers the potential to make state-of-the art inertial and gravitational sensors that will have a wide range of potential applications.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Dynamical control of matter-wave tunneling in periodic potentials
• Fidelity of quantum operations
• Ultracold atom interferometry in space
• Optimal Generators for Quantum Sensing
• Guided matter wave inertial sensing in a miniature physics package

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Robust Quantum Control via Multipath Interference for Thousandfold Phase Amplification in a Resonant Atom Interferometer
• Vector Atom Accelerometry in an Optical Lattice
• Engineering tunable decoherence-free subspaces with collective atom-cavity interactions
• High-contrast double Bragg interferometry via detuning control
• Tune-out wavelength for the thulium atom near 576 nm
• High-Precision Phase Control of an Optical Lattice with up to 50 dB Noise Suppression