Condensate splitting in an asymmetric double well for atom chip based sensors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel atom chip sensor using condensate splitting in an asymmetric double well, achieving high sensitivity to gravity fields and proposing improvements for chip-based gravity detection.

Contribution

It introduces a new method for atom chip-based gravity sensors using asymmetric double-well potential and analyzes its sensitivity and potential improvements.

Findings

Achieved single shot gravity sensitivity of δg/g ≈ 2×10⁻⁴.

Controlled atom distribution between wells by tuning barrier and asymmetry.

Proposed analytic model for enhancing chip-based gravity detectors.

Abstract

We report on the adiabatic splitting of a BEC of $^{87}$Rb atoms by an asymmetric double-well potential located above the edge of a perpendicularly magnetized TbGdFeCo film atom chip. By controlling the barrier height and double-well asymmetry the sensitivity of the axial splitting process is investigated through observation of the fractional atom distribution between the left and right wells. This process constitutes a novel sensor for which we infer a single shot sensitivity to gravity fields of $\delta g/g\approx2\times10^{-4}$. From a simple analytic model we propose improvements to chip-based gravity detectors using this demonstrated methodology.