Spatial and Pulse Efficiency Constraints in Atom Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors
arXiv:2506.09511 · doi:10.1088/2058-9565/adffb1
Abstract
Currently planned and constructed terrestrial detectors for gravitational waves and dark matter based on differential light-pulse atom interferometry are designed around three primary strategies to enhance their sensitivity: (i) Resonant-mode enhancement using multiple diamonds, (ii) large-momentum-transfer techniques to increase arm separation within the interferometer, and (iii) very-long baseline schemes that increase the distance between the two interferometers. Both resonant-mode enhancement and large-momentum-transfer techniques result in a greater number of light pulses, making high pulse fidelity during atom-light interactions imperative. At the same time, increasing the number of diamonds in vertical configurations leads to taller atomic fountains, which consequently reduces the available distance between interferometers. As a result, the number of diamonds, large-momentum-transfer pulses, and the fountain height are interdependent parameters that must be carefully balanced. In this work, we present optimal configurations for multi-diamond geometries, explicitly accounting for the spatial extent of a single interferometer, considering constraints imposed by the baseline dimensions and atomic losses due to imperfect pulses. We provide practical analytical relations to estimate the optimal number of pulses that should be applied. Many proposals beyond demonstrator experiments require pulse numbers that demand efficiencies not yet demonstrated with state-of-the-art momentum transfer techniques. As a result, the observed sensitivity falls short of expectations - an effect caused by both arm separation and atom loss per pulse - highlighting the urgent need for research aimed at improving pulse fidelities.
13 pages, 5 figures
References in corpus (50)
- Interferometry with Bose-Einstein Condensates in Microgravity
- AEDGE: Atomic Experiment for Dark Matter and Gravity Exploration in Space
- A New Method for Gravitational Wave Detection with Atomic Sensors
- AION: An Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network
- An Atomic Gravitational Wave Interferometric Sensor (AGIS)
- Exploring gravity with the MIGA large scale atom interferometer
- Atom Interferometry with up to 24-Photon-Momentum-Transfer Beam Splitters
- Interleaved Atom Interferometry for High Sensitivity Inertial Measurements
- Matter wave lensing to picokelvin temperatures
- Matter-wave Atomic Gradiometer Interferometric Sensor (MAGIS-100)
- Search for light scalar dark matter with atomic gravitational wave detectors
- ZAIGA: Zhaoshan Long-baseline Atom Interferometer Gravitation Antenna
- An Atomic Gravitational Wave Interferometric Sensor in Low Earth Orbit (AGIS-LEO)
- Large Momentum Beamsplitter using Bloch Oscillations
- Precision atomic gravimeter based on Bragg diffraction
- Atom interferometry with the Sr optical clock transition
- A Resonant Mode for Gravitational Wave Detectors based on Atom Interferometry
- Enhancing the area of a Raman atom interferometer using a versatile double-diffraction technique
- Large Momentum Transfer Clock Atom Interferometry on the 689 nm Intercombination Line of Strontium
- ELGAR -- a European Laboratory for Gravitation and Atom-interferometric Research
- 80hk Momentum Separation with Bloch Oscillations in an Optically Guided Atom Interferometer
- Low Frequency Gravitational Wave Detection With Ground Based Atom Interferometer Arrays
- Double Bragg diffraction: A tool for atom optics
- Prospective Sensitivities of Atom Interferometers to Gravitational Waves and Ultralight Dark Matter
- Momentum Entanglement for Atom Interferometry
- Representation-free description of light-pulse atom interferometry including non-inertial effects
- Correlative methods for dual-species quantum tests of the weak equivalence principle
- Influence of lasers propagation delay on the sensitivity of atom interferometers
- Sr atom interferometry with the optical clock transition as a gravimeter and a gravity gradiometer
- Atom Interferometry with Floquet Atom Optics
- Symmetric Bloch oscillations of matter waves
- Regimes of atomic diffraction: Raman versus Bragg diffraction in retroreflective geometries
- Multi-loop atomic Sagnac interferometry
- Refined ultralight scalar dark matter searches with compact atom gradiometers
- Ultralight dark matter searches at the sub-Hz frontier with atom multigradiometry
- Controlling the Multiport Nature of Bragg Diffraction in Atom Interferometry
- Scalable, symmetric atom interferometer for infrasound gravitational wave detection
- Optimal Floquet Engineering for Large Scale Atom Interferometers
- Universality-of-clock-rates test using atom interferometry with scaling
- Bi-selective pulses for large-area atom interferometry
- Light propagation and atom interferometry in gravity and dilaton fields
- Atom interferometry with coherent enhancement of Bragg pulse sequences
- Super-Nyquist ultralight dark matter searches with broadband atom gradiometers
- Characterization of an atom interferometer in the quasi-Bragg regime
- Atomic diffraction from single-photon transitions in gravity and Standard-Model extensions
- Optimal baseline exploitation in vertical dark-matter detectors based on atom interferometry
- Robust Quantum Control via Multipath Interference for Thousandfold Phase Amplification in a Resonant Atom Interferometer
- Clock Transitions Versus Bragg Diffraction in Atom-interferometric Dark-matter Detection
- Bloch Oscillation Phases investigated by Multi-path Stuckelberg Atom Interferometry
- Dichroic mirror pulses for optimized higher-order atomic Bragg diffraction