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Controlling the cold collision shift in high precision atomic interferometry

F. Pereira Dos Santos·H. Marion·S. Bize·Y. Sortais·A. Clairon·C. Salomon
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Abstract

We present here a new method based on a transfer of population by adiabatic passage that allows to prepare cold atomic samples with a well defined ratio of atomic density and atom number. This method is used to perform a measurement of the cold collision frequency shift in a laser cooled cesium clock at the percent level, which makes the evaluation of the cesium fountains accuracy at the $10^{-16}$ level realistic. With an improved set-up, the adiabatic passage would allow measurements of atom number-dependent phase shifts at the $10^{-3}$ level in high precision experiments.

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F. Pereira Dos Santos, H. Marion, S. Bize, Y. Sortais, A. Clairon, C. Salomon. 2002-09-03. Controlling the cold collision shift in high precision atomic interferometry. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.89.233004

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