What is atom interferometry used for?
Atom interferometers are used to measure gravitational acceleration, gravity gradients, accelerations, rotations, fundamental constants such as the gravitational constant and the fine structure constant, and can be used to measure or constrain new physics that couples to matter.
What is matter wave interferometry?
Abstract. Matter-wave interference experiments enable us to study matter at its most basic, quantum level and form the basis of high-precision sensors for applications such as inertial and gravitational field sensing.
What are the components of interferometer?
An interferometer is an instrument that compares the position or surface structure of two objects. The basic two-beam division of amplitude interferometer components consists of a light source, a beamsplitter, a reference surface, and a test surface (Figure 1).
How does interferometer work?
Interferometers are investigative tools used in many fields of science and engineering. They are called interferometers because they work by merging two or more sources of light to create an interference pattern, which can be measured and analyzed; hence ‘Interfere-o-meter’, or interferometer.
What is the process of interferometry?
‘Interferometry’ is a measurement method using the phenomenon of interference of waves (usually light, radio or sound waves). The measurements may include those of certain characteristics of the waves themselves and the materials that the waves interact with.
What is the purpose of atomic interferometry?
Atom interferometry allows precise measurement of the properties of atoms themselves. For example, the phase shifts induced by static electric fields may be used to measure the atomic polarizability (Pritchard, 1993; Rieger et al., 1993) or as a test of charge neutrality.
What happens to the ground state of an atom during interferometry?
The atom remains in the ground electronic state, but gains kinetic energy. Our group helped invent and characterize this method for atom interferometry and remains a speciality of two of our interferometers.
When was the atom interferometer invented?
In fact, the concept of an atom interferometer was patented in 1973 and it has been extensively discussed since.
What is an interferometer phase?
Any effect that modifies the potential energy, internal energy, or kinetic energy across the two arms of the interferometer appears in the interferometer phase. Different atom interferometer geometries can be used to cancel certain phase terms while enhancing others.