Tunneling Gravimetry

TL;DR

This paper investigates the use of matter-wave tunneling in Fabry-Pérot interferometers for highly sensitive inertial measurements, exploring configurations, dynamics, and realistic experimental conditions.

Contribution

It introduces two tunneling-based matter-wave sensor configurations and evaluates their feasibility and sensitivity for inertial sensing applications.

Findings

Numerical simulations demonstrate the dynamics of tunneling in realistic optical potentials.

Estimated sensitivities suggest feasibility for inertial force detection.

Interactions between atoms influence the tunneling behavior and sensor performance.

Abstract

We examine the prospects of utilizing matter-wave Fabry-P\'{e}rot interferometers for enhanced inertial sensing applications. Our study explores such tunneling-based sensors for the measurement of accelerations in two configurations: (a) a transmission setup, where the initial wave packet is transmitted through the cavity and (b) an out-tunneling scheme with intra-cavity generated initial states lacking a classical counterpart. We perform numerical simulations of the complete dynamics of the quantum wave packet, investigate the tunneling through a matter-wave cavity formed by realistic optical potentials and determine the impact of interactions between atoms. As a consequence we estimate the prospective sensitivities to inertial forces for both proposed configurations and show their feasibility for serving as inertial sensors.