Measurement of gravitational acceleration in a single laser operated atomic fountain

TL;DR

This paper reports on a cold atom gravimeter that measures Earth's gravitational acceleration with high sensitivity using laser-cooled rubidium atoms in a fountain setup and atom interferometry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel in-house developed atomic fountain gravimeter employing Raman interferometry for precise gravity measurements.

Findings

Measured local gravitational acceleration with 621 μGal sensitivity

Demonstrated the effectiveness of atom interferometry in gravity measurement

Achieved stable measurements over 1350 seconds

Abstract

We present measurements on Earth's gravitational acceleration (g) using an in-house developed cold atom gravimeter (CAG) in an atomic fountain geometry. In the setup, the laser cooled $^{87}Rb$ atoms are launched vertically up in the fountain geometry and Doppler sensitive two-photon Raman pulse atom interferometry is applied to detect the gravitational acceleration experienced by the atoms. Using our gravimeter setup, we have measured the local value of 'g' in our laboratory with sensitivity of 621 $\mu$Gal for integration time of 1350 s.