Atom lasers: production, properties and prospects for precision inertial measurement

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development and properties of atom lasers, highlighting their potential for high-precision inertial sensing due to their coherent, low-divergence matter-wave beams with quantum-enhanced measurement capabilities.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental progress and discusses the potential of atom lasers for advanced precision inertial measurement applications.

Findings

Atom lasers exhibit low divergence and high spectral flux.

They display quantum correlations similar to optical lasers.

Potential to perform measurements at or below quantum noise limits.

Abstract

We review experimental progress on atom lasers out-coupled from Bose-Einstein condensates, and consider the properties of such beams in the context of precision inertial sensing. The atom laser is the matter-wave analog of the optical laser. Both devices rely on Bose-enhanced scattering to produce a macroscopically populated trapped mode that is output-coupled to produce an intense beam. In both cases, the beams often display highly desirable properties such as low divergence, high spectral flux and a simple spatial mode that make them useful in practical applications, as well as the potential to perform measurements at or below the quantum projection noise limit. Both devices display similar second-order correlations that differ from thermal sources. Because of these properties, atom lasers are a promising source for application to precision inertial measurements.