Simultaneous Dual-Species Matter-Wave Accelerometer

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a dual-species matter-wave interferometer using rubidium isotopes, achieving high-precision differential acceleration measurements and testing the Weak Equivalence Principle with promising results.

Contribution

It introduces a simultaneous dual-species atom interferometer with improved differential acceleration sensitivity and initial tests of the Weak Equivalence Principle.

Findings

Differential acceleration resolution below 3.9×10⁻⁸g

Effective common-mode vibration noise rejection

First differential free fall measurement between isotopes

Abstract

We report the realization of a matter-wave interferometer based on Raman transitions which simultaneously interrogates two different atomic species ($^{87}$Rb and $^{85}$Rb). The simultaneous aspect of our experiment presents encouraging preliminary results for future dual-species atom interferometry projects and seems very promising by taking advantage of a differential acceleration measurement. Indeed the resolution of our differential accelerometer remains lower than $3.9\times 10^{-8}g$ even with vibration levels up to $1\times10^{-3}g$ thanks to common-mode vibration noise rejection . An atom based test of the Weak Equivalence Principle has also been carried out leading to a differential free fall measurement between both isotopes of $\Delta g/g = (1.2 \pm 3.2)\times10^{-7}$.