Measuring Rotation in a Bose-Einstein Condensate with Phonon Interferometry

Inertial sensors are critical in navigation systems but are typically reliant on the GPS network. New classes of inertial sensors that exploit quantum effects promise to give enhanced absolute measurements of motion in GPS-denied environments such as in space or underwater. In this work, we demonstrate the use of a ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as a rotation sensor by imprinting phase [1] to create low-energy phonon standing wave excitations and then observing the precession of the nodes and antinodes of the excitation in response to rotation. We observe a high-quality factor of up to Q = 27 for the imprinted excitations which, when combined with a relatively large 100 μm ring diameter, realizes a much higher sensitivity than has been demonstrated previously [2,3]. Persistent currents are imprinted into the ring, mimicking slow rotation rates and demonstrating the measurement utility of the scheme. Experimental results are compared with simulations using finite temperature stochastic projected Gross Pitaevskii equation (SPGPE) that reveal the dominant damping mechanisms, furthermore demonstrating the parameter space where the damping can be minimized.



[1] A. Kumar et al., Phys. Rev. A. 97, 043615 (2018)

[2] G. E. Marti, R. Olf & D. M. Stamper Kurn, Phys Rev. A. 91, 013602 (2015).

[3] A. Kumar, N. Anderson, W. D. Phillips, S. Eckel, G. Campbell & S. Stringari, New J. Phys. 18 025001

(2016)