New approaches for atom-light-based precision measurement and metrology

Pei-Chen Kuan^1*

¹Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

* Presenter:Pei-Chen Kuan, email:pckuan@phys.ncku.edu.tw

In atom interferometers, light pulses direct matter waves into different paths by atom-light interactions. The wave functions in different paths accumulate different phases which can be read out by measuring the population at the interferometer outputs. Unlike photons, atoms have mass, which makes atom interferometers suited to measure gravity, recoil frequency, Newton’s gravity constant G, and so on. In this talk, I will first present an example of using such a precise instrument to make the state-of-the-art measurement of the fine structure constant. In the second part of the talk, I will show a new method of measuring the centre-of-mass motion of an atomic ensemble by the collective interference of the ensemble of atoms based on electromagnetically-induced-transparency. Moving forward, I will discuss new proposed approaches to enhance the performance of atom interferometers and study fundamental physics by introducing new types of atom-light interactions, like superradiant Raman transition and double diffraction Bloch oscillations.

Keywords: Atom interferometry, Cold atoms, Precision measurement