# Proper time in atom interferometers: Diffractive versus specular mirrors

## TL;DR

This paper compares diffractive and specular mirror-based atom interferometers, highlighting how specular mirrors introduce nonrelativistic proper time effects due to gravity-induced asymmetry.

## Contribution

It presents a detailed comparison of conventional diffractive and novel specular mirror atom interferometers, emphasizing the impact of mirror type on phase and proper time signatures.

## Key findings

- Specular mirrors create asymmetric interferometer geometries.
- Proper time effects are observable in gravity-influenced specular setups.
- Diffractive and specular configurations differ in phase signatures.

## Abstract

We compare a conventional Mach-Zehnder light-pulse atom interferometer based on diffractive mirrors with one that uses specular reflection. In contrast to diffractive mirrors that generate a symmetric configuration, specular mirrors realized, for example, by evanescent fields lead under the influence of gravity to an asymmetric geometry. In such an arrangement the interferometer phase contains nonrelativistic signatures of proper time.