Enhanced gyroscope scale factor in an area-chirped array of coupled matter-wave interferometers

John R.E. Toland, Stephanie J. Arouh, Christopher J. Diggins, Christopher Sorrentino, Christopher P. Search

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7 Scopus citations

Abstract

The utilization of atom interferometry for gyroscopes is of considerable interest because the detection of inertial rotations via the Sagnac effect has a potential 1010 greater sensitivity than optical gyroscopes. Here we analyze, in the presence of a rotation Ω, phase-coherent transport of atomic matter waves in a one-dimensional chain of N ring interferometers in which the sizes of the rings are chirped symmetrically about the center ring. The gyroscope scale factor of the area-chirped array for N 10 is several orders of magnitude larger than that for the unchirped array, which itself is larger than the scale factor of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with the same enclosed area. This enhancement is achieved with total enclosed areas that are larger or smaller than that of the unchirped array by less than 25%. As such, the area chirp achieves rotation sensitivities with N 10 interferometers that would normally require N 100 rings of identical sizes.

Original languageEnglish
Article number043614
JournalPhysical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Volume85
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Apr 2012

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