Robust control for tight SWAP cold atom sensors

Cold atom sensors currently provide state-of-the-art performance under lab conditions. Deploying these in tight-SWAP conditions, however, presents a variety of challenges arising from laser instabilities, such as power, frequency, and phase fluctuations. We demonstrate that robust control techniques - related to dynamic decoupling and dynamically-corrected composite pulses - can significantly improve the sensitivity of cold atom sensors in tight SWAP conditions, achieving performance commensurate with state-of-the-art lab conditions. We derive these robust control pulses using a custom numerical-optimization package, producing control solutions robust to specific coloured noise spectrums, and with relevant experimental constraints including bandwidth limitations. Our robust protocol is benchmarked against standard atom interferometry protocols, showing comparable sensitivity under ideal conditions, and over an order or magnitude improvement in a simulated field-deployed environment including realistic laser fluctuations.