Falling Atoms

Abstract

Atomic fountain clocks launch laser-cooled balls of atoms upwards to some height $h$ in the local gravitational field where they experience both second-order Doppler shifts and gravitational frequency shifts. It is shown in this paper that the net shift, relative to a reference at the launch point, is $ g h/3 c^2$. We derive the next most significant correction to this expression, and show that the value of $g$ should be corrected for Coriolis and centripetal effects.