Enhanced Readout from Spatial Interference Fringes in a Point-Source Cold Atom Inertial Sensor

When the initial size of an atom cloud in a cold atom interferometer is negligible compared to its size after free expansion, the interferometer is approximated to a point-source interferometer and is sensitive to rotational movements by introducing an additional phase shear in the interference sequ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2023-05, Vol.23 (11), p.5071
Main Authors: Wang, Jing, Tong, Junze, Xie, Wenbin, Wang, Ziqian, Feng, Yafei, Wang, Xiaolong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceleration
Angular velocity
Approximation
atom interferometry
cold atom inertial sensor
Cold atoms
Communication
Comparative analysis
Cooling
Gravitational waves
Image contrast
Image enhancement
Interference fringes
Interferometers
Interferometry
Lasers
Magnetic fields
Noise measurement
Optical instruments
principal component analysis
Principal components analysis
Sensors
Signal to noise ratio
Velocity
Velocity measurement
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Description
Summary:When the initial size of an atom cloud in a cold atom interferometer is negligible compared to its size after free expansion, the interferometer is approximated to a point-source interferometer and is sensitive to rotational movements by introducing an additional phase shear in the interference sequence. This sensitivity on rotation enables a vertical atom-fountain interferometer to measure angular velocity in addition to gravitational acceleration, which it is conventionally used to measure. The accuracy and precision of the angular velocity measurement depends on proper extraction of frequency and phase from spatial interference patterns detected via the imaging of the atom cloud, which is usually affected by various systematic biases and noise. To improve the measurement, a pre-fitting process based on principal component analysis is applied to the recorded raw images. The contrast of interference patterns are enhanced by 7-12 dB when the processing is present, which leads to an enhancement in the precision of angular velocity measurements from 6.3 μrad/s to 3.3 μrad/s. This technique is applicable in various instruments that involve precise extraction of frequency and phase from a spatial interference pattern.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s23115071