Sensitive absolute-gravity gradiometry using atom interferometry

By J. Mcguirk, G. Foster, J. Fixler, M. J. Snadden, M. Kasevich. 2001

477 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report the demonstration of a sensitive absolute-gravity gradiometer based on light-pulse atom-interference techniques. The gradiometer consists of two absolute accelerometers operated in a differential mode. We report a differential acceleration sensitivity of $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}9}g/{\mathrm{Hz}}^{1/2}$ and an inferred differential acceleration accuracy of less than ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}9}g.$ This corresponds to a gravity-gradient sensitivity of $4E/{\mathrm{Hz}}^{1/2}$ ${(1E=10}^{\ensuremath{-}9}{\mathrm{s}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}2})$ and an accuracy of better than $1E$ for a 10-m separation between accelerometers. We demonstrate that the instrument can be used to detect nearby masses in a vibrationally noisy environment and characterize instrument sensitivity to spurious acceleration and rotation noise.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/51b9ebfe82bbb151e7356ef892359338d4fa0744

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. John Kitching
2. Svenja Knappe
3. Kai Bongs
4. Klaus Sengstock
5. E. A. Donley
6. S. J. Seltzer

Citations in the corpus

• Atomic Sensors – A Review (2011, background): “gravimeters mounted to the same reference frame [102].”
• Quantum test of the Universality of Free Fall using rubidium and potassium (2020, methodology): “gly enters the phase shift as follows: ˚ i= (gi i ke,i ) ke,i T2 : (5) For i = ke;igi the accumulated phase shift ˚ i = 0 for all pulse separation times T. We apply the momentum reversal technique [51, 57] to suppress systematic errors independent of the direction of momentum transfer. We distinguis”
• STE-QUEST—test of the universality of free fall using cold atom interferometry (2013, background): “Suppression ratios of 140 dB were demonstrated in single species differential atom interferometers [65].”
• GOCE gravitational gradiometry (2011, methodology): “Quantum gravity gradiometry may become the measurement method of the future ( McGuirk et al. 2002; Yu et al. 2006).”
• Physics with coherent matter waves (2004, background): “State-of-the-art atom interferometers are among the most precise sensors for the measurement of frequency, rotations, gravity and gravity gradients [10, 303, 12, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311] even with a thermal atom source.”