Malo Cadoret

Compact cold atom gravimeter for field applications

We present a cold atom gravimeter dedicated to field applications. Despite the compactness of our gravimeter, we obtain performances (sensitivity 42 μGal/Hz1/2, accuracy 25 μGal) close to the best gravimeters. We report gravity measurements in an elevator which led us to the determination of the Earths gravity gradient with a precision of 4E. These measurements in a non-laboratory environment demonstrate that our technology of gravimeter is enough compact, reliable, and robust for field applications. Finally, we report gravity measurements in a moving elevator which open the way to absolute gravity measurements in an aircraft or a boat.

500 GHz mode-hop-free idler tuning range with a frequency-stabilized singly resonant optical parametric oscillator

A 1064 nm pumped continuous-wave, mid-IR (3-4 μm), signal-wave resonant optical parametric oscillator is frequency stabilized at the kilohertz jitter level to the transmission peak of an external high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity. Owing to the high stability of the resonator length against acoustical perturbation, fine pump tuning of the idler wave around 3.3 μm results in an unprecedented mode-hop-free continuous scan over 500 GHz (17 cm⁻¹).

Local gravity measurement with the combination of atom interferometry and Bloch oscillations

We present a local measurement of gravity combining Bloch oscillations and atom interferometry. With a falling distance of 0.8 mm, we achieve a sensitivity of 2x10-7 g with an integration time of 300 s. No bias associated with the Bloch oscillations has been measured. A contrast decay with Bloch oscillations has been observed and attributed to the spatial quality of the laser beams. A simple experimental configuration has been adopted where a single retro-reflected laser beam is performing atoms launch, stimulated Raman transitions and Bloch oscillations. The combination of Bloch oscillations and atom interferometry can thus be realized with an apparatus no more complex than a standard atomic gravimeter.

Phase shift in an atom interferometer induced by the additional laser lines of a Raman laser generated by modulation

The use of a Raman laser generated by modulation for a light-pulse atom interferometer allows for a laser system that is compact and robust. However, the additional laser frequencies generated can perturb the atom interferometer. In this article, we present a precise calculation of the phase shift induced by the additional laser frequencies. The model is validated by comparison with experimental measurements on an atom gravimeter. The uncertainty of the phase-shift determination limits the accuracy of our compact gravimeter to

High-speed multi-THz-range mode-hop-free tunable mid-IR laser spectrometer.

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Multi-line fiber laser system for cesium and rubidium atom interferometry

. We show that it is possible to reduce this inaccuracy considerably with a better control of experimental parameters or with particular interferometer configurations.

Phase shift formulation for N-light-pulse atom interferometers: application to inertial sensing

We report on a widely (2.25 THz or 75 cm(-1)) and rapidly (4.5 THz/s) mode-hop-free (MHF) tunable mid-IR laser source at ~3.3 μm, consisting of a 5%-MgO:LiNbO(3) singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (SRO) pumped by an automated broadly MHF tunable extended-cavity diode laser (ECDL). The broad and rapid MHF tuning capability of the ECDL is readily transferred to the SRO idler wave owing to the quasi-noncritical pump spectral acceptance bandwidth of the quasi-phase-matching. Fast and broadband high-resolution Doppler spectroscopy measurements of the ν(3) band of CH(4) are presented to illustrate the performance of the mid-IR optical parametric oscillator spectrometer.

New concepts of inertial measurements with multi-species atom interferometry

We present an innovative multi-line fiber laser system for both cesium and rubidium manipulation. The architecture is based on frequency conversion of two lasers at 1560 nm and 1878 nm. By taking advantage of existing high performance fibered components at these wavelengths, we have demonstrated multi-line operation of an all fiber laser system delivering 350 mW at 780 nm for rubidium and 210 mW at 852 nm for cesium. This result highlights the promising nature of such laser system especially for Cs manipulation for which no fiber laser system has been reported. It offers new perspectives for the development of atomic instruments dedicated to onboard applications and opens the way to a new generation of atom interferometers involving three atomic species (85Rb, 87Rb and 133Cs) for which we propose an original laser architecture.

Frequency-doubled telecom fiber laser for a cold atom interferometer using optical lattices

We report on an original and simple formulation of the phase shift in N-light-pulse atom interferometers. We consider atomic interferometers based on two-photon transitions (Raman transitions or Bragg pulses). Starting from the exact analytical phase shift formula obtained from the atom optics ABCD formalism, we use a power series expansion in time of the position of the atomic wave packet with respect to the initial condition. The result of this expansion leads to a formulation of the interferometer phase shift, where the leading coefficient in the phase terms up to Tk dependences (k≥0) in the time separation T between pulses can be simply expressed in terms of a product between a Vandermonde matrix and a vector characterizing the two-photon pulse sequence of the interferometer. This simple coefficient dependence of the phase shift reflects very well the atom interferometer’s sensitivity to a specific inertial field in the presence of multiple gravito-inertial effects. Consequently, we show that this formulation is well suited when looking for selective atomic sensors of accelerations, rotations, or photon recoil only, which can be obtained by simply zeroing some specific coefficients. We give a theoretical application of our formulation to the photon recoil measurement.

Compact and robust laser system for precision atom interferometry based on a frequency doubled telecom fiber bench

In the field of cold atom inertial sensors, we present and analyze innovative configurations for improving their measurement range and sensitivity, especially attracting for onboard applications. These configurations rely on multi-species atom interferometry, involving the simultaneous manipulation of different atomic species in a unique instrument to deduce inertial measurements. Using a dual-species atom accelerometer manipulating simultaneously both isotopes of rubidium, we report a preliminary experimental realization of original concepts involving the implementation of two atom interferometers, first, with different interrogation times and, second, in phase quadrature.