Calibration of a compact absolute atomic gravimeter**Project supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0301601), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11674301), Anhui Initiative in Quantum Information Technologies, China (Grant No. AHY120000), and Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project, China (Grant No. 2019SHZDZX01).

Abstract

Compact atomic gravimeters are the potential next generation precision instruments for gravity survey from fundamental research to broad field applications. We report the calibration results of our home build compact absolute atomic gravimeter USTC-AG02 at Changping Campus, the National Institute of Metrology (NIM), China in January 2019. The sensitivity of the atomic gravimeter reaches (1 μGal = 1 × 10−8 m/s2) and its long-term stability reaches 0.8 μGal for averaging over 4000 seconds. Considering the statistical uncertainty, the dominant instrumental systematic errors and environmental effects are evaluated and corrected within a total uncertainty (2σ) of 15.3 μGal. After compared with the reference g value given by the corner cube gravimeter NIM-3A, the atomic gravimeter USTC-AG02 reaches the degree of equivalence of 3.7 μGal.