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PubMed2006

Six-axis inertial sensor using cold-atom interferometry.

We have developed an atom interferometer providing a full inertial base. This device uses two counterpropagating cold-atom clouds that are launched in strongly curved parabolic trajectories. Three single Raman beam pairs, pulsed in time, are successively applied in three orthogonal directions leading to the measurement of the three axis of rotation and acceleration. In this purpose, we introduce a new atom gyroscope using a butterfly geometry. We discuss the present sensitivity and the possible improvements.

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PubMed2005

High contrast Ramsey fringes with coherent-population-trapping pulses in a double lambda atomic system.

We report the observation of Raman-Ramsey fringes using a double lambda scheme creating coherent population trapping in an atomic ensemble combined with pulsed optical radiations. The observation was made in a Cs vapor mixed with N2 buffer gas in a closed cell. The double lambda scheme is created with lin perpendicular lin polarized laser beams leading to higher contrast than the usual simple lambda scheme. The pulsed trapping technique leads to narrow fringe widths scaling as 1/(2T) with high contrasts which are no longer limited by the saturation effect. This technique operates in a different way from the classical Ramsey sequence: the signal is done by applying a long trapping pulse to prepare the atomic state superposition, and fringe detection is accomplished by optical transmission during a short second trapping pulse without any perturbation of the dark state.

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