Clear skies ahead: characterizing atmospheric gravity gradient noise for vertical atom interferometers

TL;DR

This paper characterizes atmospheric gravity gradient noise affecting vertical atom interferometers, highlighting its significance and proposing mitigation strategies for future fundamental physics experiments.

Contribution

It advances understanding of atmospheric GGN, provides empirical models, and evaluates underground placement as a noise mitigation method.

Findings

Atmospheric GGN is comparable to seismic noise.

Underground placement reduces atmospheric GGN impact.

Temperature GGN varies significantly across sites.

Abstract

Terrestrial long-baseline atom interferometer experiments are emerging as powerful tools for probing new fundamental physics, including searches for dark matter and gravitational waves. In the frequency range relevant to these signals, gravity gradient noise (GGN) poses a significant challenge. While previous studies for vertical instruments have focused on GGN induced by seismic waves, atmospheric fluctuations in pressure and temperature also lead to variations in local gravity. In this work, we advance the understanding of atmospheric GGN in vertical atom interferometers, formulating a robust characterization of its impact. We evaluate the effectiveness of underground placement of atom interferometers as a passive noise mitigation strategy. Additionally, we empirically derive global high- and low-noise models for atmospheric pressure GGN and estimate an analogous range for atmospheric temperature GGN. To highlight the variability of temperature-induced noise, we compare data from three prospective experimental sites. Our findings establish atmospheric GGN as comparable to seismic noise in its impact and underscore the importance of including these effects in site selection and active noise monitoring for future experiments.