Open AccessEffects of wave-front tilt and air density fluctuations in a sensitive atom interferometry gyroscope
Author(s) -
Wenjie Xu,
Ling Jie Cheng,
Jie Liu,
Cheng Zhang,
Ke Zhang,
Yuan Cheng,
Zhi Qiang Gao,
Lushuai Cao,
Xuanchu Duan,
Min-Kang Zhou,
Zhong-Kun Hu
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.391780
Subject(s) - optics , gyroscope , tilt (camera) , physics , atom interferometer , ring laser gyroscope , sagnac effect , interferometry , fibre optic gyroscope , laser , wavefront , vacuum chamber , atom (system on chip) , astronomical interferometer , optical fiber , mechanical engineering , quantum mechanics , computer science , engineering , embedded system
We present a matter wave gyroscope with a Sagnac area of 5.92 cm 2 , achieving a short-term sensitivity of 167 nrad/s/Hz 1/2 . The atom interferometry gyroscope is driven by a π/2 - π - π - π/2 Raman pulse sequence based on an atom fountain with a parabolic trajectory. The phase-locked laser beams for Raman transitions partly propagate outside of the vacuum chamber and expose to the air when passing through the two arms of the vacuum chamber. This configuration leads to the tilt of the laser's wave-front and suffers the fluctuation of air density. The impacts on both the fringe contrast and long-term stability are experimentally investigated in detail, and effective schemes are developed to improve the performance of our atom gyroscope. The method presented here could be useful for developing large atom interferometry facilities with separated vacuum chambers.