A Michelson interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensates is demonstrated with coherence times of up to 44 ms and arm separations up to 180 m. This arm separation is larger than that observed for any previous atom interferometer. The device uses atoms weakly confined in a magnetic guide and the atomic motion is controlled using Bragg interactions with an off-resonant standing-wave laser beam.

The loading dynamics of an alkali-metal-atom magneto-optical trap can be used as a reliable measure of vacuum pressure, with loading time τ indicating a pressure less than or equal to (2 × 10 −8 Torr s)/τ . This relation is accurate to approximately a factor of 2 over wide variations in trap parameters, background gas composition, or trapped alkali-metal species. The low-pressure limit of the method does depend on the trap parameters, but typically extends to below 1 × 10 −9 Torr.

Abstract. Guided-wave atom interferometers measure interference effects using atoms held in a confining potential. In one common implementation, the confinement is primarily two-dimensional, and the atoms move along the nearly free dimension under the influence of an off-resonant standing wave laser beam. In this configuration, residual confinement along the nominally free axis can introduce a phase gradient to the atoms that limits the arm separation of the interferometer. We experimentally investigate this effect in detail, and show that it can be alleviated by having the atoms undergo a more symmetric motion in the guide. This can be achieved by either using additional laser pulses or by allowing the atoms to freely oscillate in the potential. Using these techniques, we demonstrate interferometer measurement times up to 72 ms and arm separations up to 0.42 mm with a well controlled phase, or times of 0.91 s and separations of 1.7 mm with an uncontrolled phase.

Atoms from a (87)Rb condensate are suspended against gravity using repeated reflections from a pulsed optical standing wave. Up to 100 reflections are observed, yielding suspension times of over 100 ms. The local gravitational acceleration can be determined from the pulse rate required to achieve suspension. Further, a gravitationally sensitive atom interferometer was implemented using the suspended atoms. This technique could potentially provide a precision measurement of gravity without requiring the atoms to fall a large distance.

The dynamic polarizability of 87 Rb atoms was measured using a guided-wave Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer. Taking advantage of the large arm separations obtainable in our device, a well-calibrated laser beam is applied to one atomic packet and not the other, inducing a differential phase shift. The technique requires relatively low laser intensity and works for arbitrary optical frequencies. For off-resonant light, the ac polarizability is obtained with a statistical accuracy of 3% and a calibration uncertainty of 6%. On resonance, the dispersion-shaped behavior of the Stark shift is observed, but with a broadened linewidth that is attributed to collective light scattering effects. The resulting nonlinearity may prove useful for the production and control of squeezed quantum states.