1999/05/22 by Tycho Sleator, Sleator, Tycho, P. R. Berman +5
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Frequency and Time Standards #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/9905047
12 pages, 17 figures,latex. To be published in the proceedings of 1999 NASA/JPL International Conference on Fundamental Physics
arxiv created 1999/05/22 · openalex publication_date 1999/05/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose a set of experiments in which Ramsey-fringe techniques are tailored to probe transitions originating and terminating on the same ground state level. When pulses of resonant radiation, separated by a time delay % T, interact with atoms, it is possible to produce Ramsey fringes having widths of order 1/T. If each pulse contains two counterpropagating travelling wave modes, the atomic wave function is split into two or more components having different center-of-mass momenta. Matter-wave interference of these components leads to atomic gratings, which have been observed in both spatially separated fields and time separated fields. Time-dependent signals can be transformed into frequency dependent signals, leading to ground state Ramsey fringes (GSRF). The signals can be used to probe many problems of fundamental importance: a precise measurement of the earth gravitational acceleration g and residual gravity in a microgravity environment with an accuracy 6 10-9g; the rotation rate measurement with an accuracy of 6 10-3 deg/h; the recoil frequency measurement. Since only transitions originating and terminating on the same ground state are involved, frequency measurements can be carried out using lasers phase-locked by quartz oscillators having relatively low frequency. Our technique may allow one to increase the precision by a factor of 100 (the rf- to quartz oscillator frequencies ratio) over previous experiments based on Raman-Ramsey fringes or reduce on the same factor requirements for frequency stabilization.