Measuring the local gravitational field using survival resonances in a dissipatively driven atom-optics system
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Shijie Chai; Julia Fekete; Mikkel F. Andersen
- Source
- Physical Review A. 98
- Subject
- Physics
Gravitational field
Gravimeter
Drop (liquid)
0103 physical sciences
Atom optics
Physics::Atomic Physics
010306 general physics
Gravitational acceleration
01 natural sciences
010305 fluids & plasmas
Computational physics
- Language
- ISSN
- 2469-9934
2469-9926
We do a proof-of-principle demonstration of an atomic gravimeter based on survival resonances of dissipatively driven atoms. Exposing laser-cooled atoms to a sequence of near-resonant standing-wave light pulses reveals survival resonances when the standing-wave interference pattern accelerates. The resonant accelerations determine the local gravitational acceleration and we achieve a precision of 5 ppm with a drop distance less than 1 mm. The incisiveness of the resonances scales with the square of the drop time. Present results indicate that an appropriately designed atomic gravimeter based on survival resonances might be able to reach a precision of 1μGal with a 10-cm-high fountain. The relatively simple experimental construction of this technique may be of interest for a compact absolute atomic gravimeter.