A. Landragin — Page 3

arXiv2005

Transportable laser system for atom interferometry

We describe an optical bench in which we lock the relative frequencies or phases of a set of three lasers in order to use them in a cold atoms interferometry experiment. As a new feature, the same two lasers serve alternately to cool atoms and to realize the atomic interferometer. This requires a fast change of the optical frequencies over a few GHz. The number of required independent laser sources is then only 3, which enables the construction of the whole laser system on a single transportable optical bench. Recent results obtained with this optical setup are also presented.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2005

Measurement of the sensitivity function in time-domain atomic interferometer

We present here an analysis of the sensitivity of a time-domain atomic interferometer to the phase noise of the lasers used to manipulate the atomic wave-packets. The sensitivity function is calculated in the case of a three pulse Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which is the configuration of the two inertial sensors we are building at BNM-SYRTE. We successfully compare this calculation to experimental measurements. The sensitivity of the interferometer is limited by the phase noise of the lasers, as well as by residual vibrations. We evaluate the performance that could be obtained with state of the art quartz oscillators, as well as the impact of the residual phase noise of the phase-lock loop. Requirements on the level of vibrations is derived from the same formalism.

physics.atom-ph↗