A vibration compensation optimization method for a mobile atomic gravimeter

Abstract

The information on the earth’s gravity provides significant strategic support for the national economy, defense, and security. Atomic gravimeter (AG) realizes highly precise measurements of gravitational acceleration by virtue of atomic interference. Vibration noise is a strong contributor to the limitation on the measurement sensitivity and accuracy of an AG. Vibration compensation enhances the environmental adaptability of an AG since it can facilitate the measurement of gravity when an isolation platform is unavailable. A dynamic compensation filter was devised for the correction of the data output from a seismometer, which expanded the bandwidth of the seismometer and lowered the distortion of vibration signals. Additionally, transfer function estimation was introduced to better reflect the actual vibration of the Raman mirror. Based on the simplified transfer function model, this method can modify the interference fringes of the AG in real-time. The experimental results exposed that the proposed optimization method could make the cosine fitting phase uncertainty of interference fringes attenuate by up to 85.91%, and reach the uncertainty of about 76.37 μGal in a complicated vibration environment. The measurement accuracy was effectively improved by the proposed method. After all, it was verified that the proposed method was effective and adaptable in a complicated environment.