Atomic interferometry with internal state labelling

Abstract

It is shown that the interaction geometry comprising four travelling laser waves which is used to obtain optical Ramsey fringes in atomic spectroscopy, is also well suited to build an atom interferometer based on the atomic recoil. Since two different internal states are associated with the two arms of the interferometer, the de Broglie phase, induced by rotation or acceleration, manifests itself as a frequency shift of the Ramsey fringes.