A high-flux source system for matter-wave interferometry exploiting tunable interactions

Abstract

Atom interferometers allow determining inertial effects to high accuracy. Quantum-projection noise as well as systematic effects impose demands on large atomic flux as well as ultra-low expansion rates. Here we report on a high-flux source of ultra-cold atoms with free expansion rates near the Heisenberg limit directly upon release from the trap. Our results are achieved in a time-averaged optical dipole trap and enabled through dynamic tuning of the atomic scattering length across two orders of magnitude interaction strength via magnetic Feshbach resonances. We demonstrate BECs with more than $6\times 10^4$ particles after evaporative cooling for $170$ ms and their subsequent release with a minimal expansion energy of $4.5$ nK in one direction. Based on our results we estimate the performance of an atom interferometer and compare our source system to a high performance chip-trap, as readily available for ultra-precise measurements in micro-gravity environments.

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Multi-axis inertial sensing with 2D matter-wave arrays
• Matter-wave collimation to picokelvin energies with scattering length and potential shape control
• All-optical production of Bose-Einstein condensates with 2 Hz repetition rate
• Geometric phase amplification in a clock interferometer for enhanced metrology
• INTENTAS -- An entanglement-enhanced atomic sensor for microgravity
• Robust and compact single-lens crossed-beam optical dipole trap for Bose-Einstein condensation in microgravity
• Delta-Kick Collimation of Heteronuclear Feshbach Molecules