Atom interferometer as a selective sensor of rotation or gravity

Abstract

In the presence of Earth gravity and gravity-gradient forces, centrifugal and Coriolis forces caused by the Earth rotation, the phase of the time-domain atom interferometers is calculated with accuracy up to the terms proportional to the fourth degree of the time separation between pulses. We considered double-loop atom interferometers and found appropriate condition to eliminate their sensitivity to acceleration to get atomic gyroscope, or to eliminate the sensitivity to rotation to increase accuracy of the atomic gravimeter. Consequent use of these interferometers allows one to measure all components of the acceleration and rotation frequency projection on the plane perpendicular to gravity acceleration. Atom interference on the Raman transition driving by noncounterpropagating optical fields is proposed to exclude stimulated echo processes which can affect the accuracy of the atomic gyroscopes. Using noncounterpropagating optical fields allows one to get a new type of the Ramsey fringes arising in the unidirectional Raman pulses and therefore centered at the two-quantum line center. Density matrix in the Wigner representation is used to perform calculations. It is shown that in the time between pulses, in the noninertial frame, for atoms with fully quantized spatial degrees of freedom, this density matrix obeys classical Liouville equations.