Upcoming Physics & Astronomy Chemistry

Shaken-lattice interferometry for multi-access inertial sensing

Funder EPSRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation University of Bristol
Funding Not disclosed
Period Sept 2027 — Sept 2027

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A laser-cooled cloud of atoms, trapped in a grid of light, will be shaken like a plate of jelly to turn it into an exquisitely sensitive motion detector. This project builds a new type of atom interferometer—a device that exploits the wave-like nature of atoms to measure acceleration and rotation with extreme precision. Current atom interferometers are bulky and fragile, limiting their use outside the lab. The shaken-lattice approach replaces free-falling atoms with atoms held in an optical lattice, making the sensor more compact and robust. The key gap is demonstrating that this technique can detect the tiny acceleration signals needed for practical inertial sensing. If successful, this fundamental science could lead to portable, high-precision navigation systems that do not rely on GPS—critical for submarines, underground tunnels, or spacecraft. It might also improve geophysical surveys for oil, gas, or groundwater, and enable tests of fundamental physics like measuring gravitational waves or searching for dark matter. The work is primarily curiosity-driven, but past atom interferometry breakthroughs have already led to atomic clocks that underpin GPS timing.

View original technical description
Atom interferometry has been an important part of deBroglie wave optics for demonstrating the ways in which atoms (i.e., "matter waves") can interfere with themselves. In the simplest case, atomic beams can be coherently split away from each other in the spatial (transverse) domain, allowed to propagate, are then reflected and later recombined. This scheme bares resemblance to optical interferometers such as the Mach-Zehnder or Michelson type. Building upon this idea, Weidner et al, proposed that the shaken-lattice interferometer (SLI) can be transformed into an inertial sensor of acceleration and rotation [1]. Through phase-modulation of the optical lattice, one can induce the sinusoidal shaking required to split the atomic clouds into different momentum states. Upon recombination to the ground state, the fidelity measurements obtained provide information about the sensitivity of the interferometer. Ideally, we want to push the capabilities of our system to be able to detect the smallest possible acceleration signal. This PhD project aims to theoretically and experimentally demonstrate the shaken-lattice interferometer with ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice for inertial sensing applications.

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Researchers

Yolan Ankaine (Student)

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Original classification

Studentship

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