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Atom chips

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Nature Physics volume 5, pages 538–539 (2009)Cite this article

Compact interferometers that exploit the wave character of atoms have the potential to outpace their optical counterparts in a number of sensing applications. A technique that harnesses the internal structure of atoms should bring such applications a step closer.

Atom interferometry holds great promise for the detection of inertial effects, acceleration, rotation and gravitation. Compared with optical interferometry, atoms have, for example, an intrinsic sensitivity to rotation, which is increased by the ratio of their rest energy to the energy of the photon — some ten orders of magnitude1. The past decade has seen the development of 'atom chips', devices in which atoms are trapped tens of micrometres above a solid substrate in the magnetic field created by wires on the surface2. A driving motivation for atom chips has been that compact, light and robust devices containing atom interferometers on a chip might, one day, fly to space or travel under the sea, bringing the power of atom interferometry to new environments. So one might dream of mapping out the gravitational field anywhere on Earth with centimetre resolution and part-per-billion accuracy in this way.

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Figure 1: An interferometer with internal-state labelling.

References

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  1. Chris Westbrook is in the Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, Campus Polytechnique, 91127 Palaiseau, France. christoph.westbrook@institutoptique.fr,

    Chris Westbrook

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  1. Chris Westbrook
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Westbrook, C. Read the labels. Nature Phys 5, 538–539 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1348

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1348

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