Guided-Wave Sagnac Atom Interferometer with Large Area and Multiple Orbits

TL;DR

This paper presents a matter-wave Sagnac interferometer with Bose condensed atoms that achieves large area and multiple orbits, demonstrating improved stability and interference visibility for precise rotation sensing.

Contribution

The authors develop a new atom interferometer setup with enhanced thermal stability, optical access, and trap control, enabling larger area and multiple orbit operation compared to previous designs.

Findings

Effective Sagnac area of 4 mm^2 per orbit

Interference visibility of 25% after two orbits

Phase stability of 0.2 radians over long-term measurements

Abstract

We describe a matter-wave Sagnac interferometer using Bose condensed atoms confined in a time-orbiting potential trap. Compared to our previous implementation [Moan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 120403 (2020)], our new apparatus provides better thermal stability, improved optical access, and reduced trap anharmonicity. The trapping field can be adjusted to compensate for small tilts of the apparatus in gravity. These features enable operation with an effective Sagnac area of 4 mm^2 per orbit, and we observe interference with 25% visibility after two orbits at a total interrogation time of 0.6 s. Long-term measurements indicate a phase stability of 0.2 rad or better.