Speaker
Description
Inertial sensors based on matter‑wave interference show great potential for navigation, geodesy, or fundamental physics. As known from the Sagnac effect, their sensitivity to rotations increases with the space-time area enclosed by the interferometer. In the case of light interferometers, the latter can be enlarged by forming multiple (fibre) loops. However, the equivalent for matter‑wave interferometers remains an experimental challenge. This contribution presents a concept for a multi‑loop atom interferometer with a scalable area formed by multiple light pulses. It exploits ultra-cold atomic ensembles, produced with atom-chip technology, combined with symmetric beam splitting and a relaunch mechanism. Due to its scalability, it offers the perspective to achieve high sensitivities to rotations in compact volumes. In addition, it can be extended by adding a second orthogonal beam splitting axis, which enables the detection of multiple rotational components. Following this conceptualization, the experimental design of a multi-axis quantum gyroscope with multi-loop capability based on the previously mentioned ideas is presented.
We acknowledge financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy - EXC-2123 QuantumFrontiers - 390837967 and through the CRC 1227 (DQ-mat), as well as support from DLR with funds provided by the BMWi under grant no. DLR 50NA2106 (QGyro+).
