Bonn 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie
GR 6: Experimente zur Gravitation 2
GR 6.2: Vortrag
Dienstag, 16. März 2010, 14:20–14:40, JUR K
Mobile accelerometers and gravity gradiometers based on atom interferometry — •Malte Schmidt1, Guglielmo Tino2, Philippe Bouyer3, Ernst M. Rasel4, Wolfgang Ertmer4, Klaus Sengstock5, Arnaud Landragin6, Massimo Inguscio7, Wolfgang Schleich8, Reinhold Walser8, Claus Lämmerzahl9, Kai Bongs10, and Achim Peters1 — 1Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin — 2Università di Firenze — 3Institut d’Optique, Orsay — 4Institut für Quantenoptik, Hannover — 5Universität Hamburg — 6SYRTE, Paris — 7LENS, Firenze — 8Universität Ulm — 9ZARM, Bremen — 10University of Birmingham
Since 1992, matter wave interferometry has been used in many laboratories for a variety of fundamental physics experiments, e.g. measurement of the fine-structure and gravity constants. However, due to the complexity of these experiments, they were confined to laboratory environments. In recent years, however, efforts have been undertaken to develop mobile atom interferometers. These new sensors open up the possibility to perform on-site high-precision measurements of rotations, gravity gradients as well as absolute accelerations.
After briefly reviewing the basic principles underlying atom interferometers, we report on the status of different projects that are currently investigating and testing possible applications of mobile interferometers. These possibilities include earthbound mobile gravimeters as well as future employment of this technology in satellite missions (ESA Space Atom Interferometer project SAI). For both of these aspects, efforts are currently underway to construct prototype sensors. We give an overview of these sensors’ designs and elaborate on their potential usefulness for earth observation missions. We acknowledge funding by ESA under contracts 20578/07/NL/VJ (SAI) and 21583/08/NL/HE (APPIA).