Precision measurement of ?/m Cs based on photon recoil using laser-cooled atoms and atomic interferometry

Noise-Immune Conjugate Large-Area Atom Interferometers

“…The free evolution phase φ F = S Cl /h is given by the classical action S Cl = (E kin − E pot )dt, where E kin and E pot are the kinetic and potential energy. The interaction phase φ I is because whenever a photon is absorbed, its phase is added to the matter wave phase and subtracted for emission of a photon [21]. This phase is different for the two paths because of the respective spatial separation of the interactions at t 2 and t 3 .…”

Stimulated Raman transitions via multiple atomic levels

“…By coupling long-lived states via, but never populating, radiative states, experimenters can emulate near-ideal two-level quantum systems with no significant decay [1][2][3]. This technique has been used to measure sub-linewidth features [4,5] and to construct atomic interferometers which, by exploiting photon recoil, create spatially separated atomic wave packets which are sensitive to gravity [6,7] or fundamental constants [8,9]. The effective two-level system, which emerges from the Raman problem, can exhibit behavior such as Rabi flopping [10,11], can be used for experiments such as Ramsey interferometry [12,13], and can provide the qubits for quantum information processing [14][15][16].…”

Recoil-Sensitive Lithium Interferometer without a Subrecoil Sample

“…Ramsey-Bordé interferometers, in particular, measure the mass m of an atom through the kinetic energy ω r = 2 k 2 /(2m) it gains after recoiling from the interaction with a photon ( is the reduced Planck constant). They can help redefine the kilogram [16,17] and determine the fine-structure constant [18][19][20][21][22], thereby testing the Standard Model [23,24]. The recoil frequency ω r , and therefore the signal, scales inversely with mass.…”