Abstract
We demonstrate atom interferometers utilizing a novel beam splitter based on sequential multiphoton Bragg diffractions. With this sequential Bragg large momentum transfer (SB-LMT) beam splitter, we achieve high contrast atom interferometers with momentum splittings of up to 102 photon recoil momenta (). To our knowledge, this is the highest momentum splitting achieved in any atom interferometer, advancing the state-of-the-art by an order of magnitude. We also demonstrate strong noise correlation between two simultaneous SB-LMT interferometers, which alleviates the need for ultralow noise lasers and ultrastable inertial environments in some future applications. Our method is intrinsically scalable and can be used to dramatically increase the sensitivity of atom interferometers in a wide range of applications, including inertial sensing, measuring the fine structure constant, and detecting gravitational waves.
- Received 15 June 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.130403
© 2011 American Physical Society
Viewpoint
Embracing Quantum Metrology with Wide Arms
Published 19 September 2011
New beam splitter techniques extend the world of precision experiments with matter waves.
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