Abstract
This work reviews the topic of rotation sensing with compact cold atom interferometers. A representative set of compact free-falling cold atom gyroscopes is considered because, in different respects, they establish a rotation-measurement reference for cold guided-atom technologies. This review first discusses enabling technologies relevant to a set of key functional building blocks of an atom chip-based compact inertial sensor with cold guided atoms. These functionalities concern the accurate and reproducible positioning of atoms to initiate a measurement cycle, the coherent momentum transfer to the atom wave packets, the suppression of propagation-induced decoherence due to potential roughness, on-chip detection, and vacuum dynamics because of its impact on sensor stability, which is due to the measurement dead time. Based on the existing enabling technologies, the design of an atom chip gyroscope with guided atoms is formalized using a design case that treats design elements such as guiding, fabrication, scale factor, rotation-rate sensitivity, spectral response, important noise sources, and sensor stability.
Highlights
The rotation sensing capability of an atom interferometer has been demonstrated by using the Sagnac effect,[39] in which two waves propagating in opposite directions inside a rotating interferometer of physical area A experience a path-length difference and a phase shift U that depends on the rotation rate X
The first compact cold atom gyroscope-accelerometer was developed by the team at SYRTE.[14]
This review presents the state-of-the-art results in atom interferometry, which are relevant for inertial navigation applications
Summary
This paper reviews various enabling technologies for the realization of compact portable cold atom gyrometers based on atom chips. Particular attention is devoted to atom chips because of their high potential in the implementation of compact quantum sensors. We present the main experimental realizations of compact cold atom gyrometers using free-falling atoms. These are reference examples of key technological solutions to specific inertial navigation questions to be considered when designing and implementing guided atom interferometers.
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