Experimental progress in gravity measurement with an atom interferometer

Abstract

Precisely determining gravity acceleration g plays an important role on both geophysics and metrology. For gravity measurements and high-precision gravitation experiments, a cold atom gravimeter with the aimed resolution of 10^-9g/Hz^1/2 (1 g=9.8 m/s²) is being built in our cave laboratory. There will be four steps for our ⁸⁷Rb atom gravimeter, Magneto–Optical Trap (MOT) for cooling and trapping atoms, initial state preparation, π/2-π-π/2 Raman laser pulse interactions with cold atoms, and the final state detection for phase measurement. About 108 atoms have been trapped by our MOT and further cooled by moving molasses, and an atomic fountain has also been observed.

Keywords

gravity measurement / atom interferometry

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Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg