A proposed atom interferometry determination of G at 10−5 using a cold atomic fountain

Abstract

In precision metrology, the determination of the Newtonian gravity constant G represents a real problem, since its history is plagued by huge unknown discrepancies between a large number of independent experiments. In this paper, we propose a novel experimental setup for measuring G with a relative accuracy of , using a standard cold atomic fountain and matter wave interferometry. We discuss in detail the major sources of systematic errors, and provide the expected statistical uncertainty. The feasibility of determining G at the level is also discussed.