Measuring gravity by holding atoms

Abstract

Despite being the dominant force of nature on large scales, gravity remains relatively elusive to experimental measurement. Many questions remain, such as its behavior at small scales or its role in phenomena ascribed to dark matter and dark energy. Atom interferometers are powerful tools for probing Earth's gravity, the gravitational constant, dark energy theories and general relativity. However, they typically use atoms in free fall, which limits the measurement time to only a few seconds, and to even briefer intervals when measuring the interaction of the atoms with a stationary source mass. Recently, interferometers with atoms suspended for as long as 70 seconds in an optical lattice have been demonstrated. To keep the atoms from falling, however, the optical lattice must apply forces that are billion-fold as strong as the putative signals, so even tiny imperfections reduce sensitivity and generate complex systematic effects. As a result, lattice interferometers have yet to demonstrate precision and accuracy on par with their free fall counterparts and have yet to be used for precision measurement. Here, we optimize the sensitivity of a lattice interferometer and use a system of signal inversions and switches to suppress and quantify systematic effects. This enables us to measure the attraction of a miniature source mass, ruling out the existence of screened dark energy theories over their natural parameter space. More importantly, the combined accuracy of $6.2{nm/s}^2$ is four times as good as the best similar measurements with freely falling atoms, demonstrating the advantages of lattice interferometry in fundamental physics measurements. Further upgrades may enable measuring forces at sub-millimeter ranges, the gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect and the gravitational constant, compact gravimetry, and testing whether the gravitational field itself has quantum properties.

17 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (17)

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• Environmental Dependence of Masses and Coupling Constants
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• Coherence limits in lattice atom interferometry at the one-minute scale
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• Atomic gravimeter robust to environmental effects

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Classical theories of gravity produce entanglement
• Accelerated creation of NOON states with ultracold atoms via counterdiabatic driving
• Closed-loop measurements in an atom interferometer gyroscope with velocity-dependent phase-dispersion compensation
• Frequency shifts induced by light scalar fields
• Quantum Metrology via Floquet-Engineered Two-axis Twisting and Turn Dynamics
• Quantum and thermal pressures from light scalar fields
• Equivalence of scalar-tensor theories and scale-dependent gravity
• Newton's laws of motion generating gravity-mediated entanglement
• Probing the nonclassical dynamics of a quantum particle in a gravitational field
• Quantum corrections to symmetron fifth-force profiles
• Photon-resolved Floquet theory approach to spectroscopic quantum sensing
• A symmetry-protected topological optical lattice clock
• Apparatus for Optical-Atomic System Integration & Calibration: 1 atm to 1$\times$10${}^{-11}$ Torr in 24h
• Subsystems (in)dependence in GIE proposals
• Multimode NOON-state generation with ultracold atoms via geodesic counterdiabatic driving
• Quantum interferometry in external gravitational fields
• Existing experiments suffice to indirectly verify the quantum essence of gravity