Progress towards a high data rate grating magneto-optical trap

Light-pulse atom interferometers (LPAIs) are of high importance for advanced inertial sensing applications due to their exquisite sensitivity and potential for long-term stability but moving from a laboratory setting to real-world environments remains difficult. Cold-atom LPAI accelerometers interrogate free-falling atoms with a sensitivity σ_g∝1/T² for interrogation time T. Therefore, the best sensitivity is achieved by maximizing T but this also means the LPAI is susceptible to motion occurring on timescales ≤T. One solution is to trade sensitivity for data rate to reduce the detrimental effects of relative motion between the freefalling atoms and the interrogation lasers. Building upon previous work that demonstrated a proof-of-concept grating magneto-optical trap (GMOT) LPAI accelerometer [1], we present work towards achieving high cycle rate (≥100 Hz) GMOT operation with the goal of mitigating detrimental effects of relative motion in a simple and compact package.

[1] J. Lee et al., Nat Commun 13, 5131 (2022)