Measuring the Earth's gravity field with cold atom interferometers

Abstract

The scope of the paper is to propose different concepts for future space gravity missions using Cold Atom Interferometers (CAI) for measuring the diagonal elements of the gravity gradient tensor, the spacecraft angular velocity and the spacecraft acceleration. The aim is to achieve better performance than previous space gravity missions due to a very low white noise spectral behaviour of the CAI instrument and a very high common mode rejection, with the ultimate goals of determining the fine structures of the gravity field with higher accuracy than GOCE and detecting time-variable signals in the gravity field.