Measurement of gravity acceleration by cold atoms in a harmonic trap using Kapitza-Dirac pulses

Abstract

The interferometry of two Kapitza-Dirac (KD) pulses acting on cold atoms in a harmonic oscillator potential well is investigated by Feynman path integral method. The wave function and density distribution function of the system at a given time are calculated analytically by using the propagator under the action of an external field. The first KD pulse acts on cold atoms to produce a large number of modes in the harmonic oscillator potential well. The maximum value of wave packet of mode 0 is larger than those of other modes. These modes evolve along different paths. The external field changes the phase of each mode and makes the evolution path of the mode deviate from that without the external field. When the second KD pulse is added, it splits the mode of the first KD pulse, and thus generates more modes. These modes will evolve along different paths under the action of external field and harmonic potential well, and interfere with each other. At the moment of measurement, all the wave packets are separated without overlapping. The effect of the external field does not change the magnitude of the density distribution at the time of measurement, but makes the wave packet of each mode shift. The phase difference between adjacent modes decreases linearly with the increase of field intensity. When the external field is a gravity field, we calculate the Fisher information and the Cramer-Rao lowér bound. The Fisher information is proportional to the mass of atoms and inversely to the third power of harmonic potential well frequency. We can improve the measurement accuracy of interferometer by reducing the frequency of harmonic potential well and increasing atomic mass. When the initial state is the ground state of the harmonic potential well, the accuracy of the gravity acceleration measured by the interference device can be obtained to be 10<sup>–9</sup> by using the experimental parameters. The initial state is the ground state of the harmonic potential well and the external field, and the calculation result indicates that the measurement accuracy will decrease. At the same time, the enhancement of inter-atomic repulsion and attraction interaction will also lead the measurement accuracy to increase.