Toward Inertial Navigation with Hybridized Matter-Wave Interferometers

Friday, August 23, 2019 2:00 pm - 2:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Seminar featuring Brynle Barrett - iXblue

High-sensitivity, low-drift inertial sensors based on cold-atom interferometry are poised to revolutionize the field of inertial guidance and navigation, yet many challenges still remain. For instance, due to the slow data rate of atom interferometers and the large bias drifts of mechanical accelerometers, hybridization schemes will almost certainly be necessary [1]. We present recent results on the hybridization of classical and quantum accelerometers in a simulated navigation environment exhibiting strong variations in temperature and vibration noise. By correlating the output of each sensor, and utilizing a novel real-time system, we are able to lock the classical accelerometer to the quantum interference fringe [2]. This feedback loop simultaneously rejects motion-induced frequency and phase shifts on the quantum accelerometer, and corrects for bias drifts on the classical one---enabling us to achieve sub-micro-g precision after a few seconds of integration. This system paves the way toward a fully-hybridized multi-axis inertial measurement unit [3] compatible with mobile sensing applications.

[1] P. Cheiney et al, ``Navigation-Compatible Hybrid Quantum Accelerometer Using a Kalman Filter'', Phys. Rev. Applied 10, 034030 (2018).
[2] P. Cheiney et al, ``Demonstration of a Robust Hybrid Classical/Quantum Accelerometer'', in Proc. of IEEE International Symposium on Inertial Sensors and Systems, Naples, USA (2019).
[3] B. Barrett et al, ``Multidimensional Atom Optics and Interferometry'', Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 043604 (2019).