J OPT SOC AM B, Vol. 32, Issue 2, pp. 248-257 (2015)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.32.000248

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/josab/abstract.cfm?uri=josab-32-2-248

Xia Li,¹ Cheng-Gang Shao,¹ and Zhong-Kun Hu^1,*

¹Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurement, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

^*Corresponding author: zkhu@mail.hust.edu.cn

Abstract

For high-precision atom interferometry gravimeters, the effect of the Raman pulse duration will become an appreciable fraction and need to be taken into account. Its influence has been reported considering a homogeneous Earth’s gravitational field in some previous works. In this paper, by decomposing the time evolution operator into two parts, the free evolution part and the interaction part, we develop an approach to study this effect in a realistic situation where the Earth’s gravitational field is inhomogeneous. A mathematic expression for the interferometer phase shift because of the Raman pulse duration effect is obtained, which shows that the Raman pulse duration should be taken into account when the gravimeter reaches an accuracy of 10−10  g.

© 2015 Optical Society of America