High-contrast atomic inertial interferometry with frequency comb or comb-like light source

Abstract

An atomic inertial interferometer comprises a laser that emits a CW beam; a modulator that modulates the CW beam; a filter and delay mechanism that receives the modulated beam, and includes a first pathway and a second pathway longer than the first pathway; a comb generator that receives the modulated beam, and produces a frequency comb; and a comb drive coupled to the comb generator to generate a multiple of a comb repetition rate, the comb drive including a HF source coupled to a bandpass filter. A vacuum cell holds a sample of cold atoms. The frequency comb counter-propagates with respect to the modulated beam to provide velocity slicing of the cold atoms such that a given temperature distribution of the cold atoms is sliced into a plurality of narrow temperature distributions that are probed individually and in parallel, to extract an interference signal from the narrow temperature distributions.