High-precision gravity measurements using atom interferometry

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We have built an atom interferometer that can measure g, the local acceleration due to gravity, with a resolution of Δg/g = 2 × 10−8 after a single 1.3 s measurement cycle, 3 × 10−9 after 1 min and 1 × 10−10 after two days of integration time. The difference between our value for g and one obtained by a falling corner-cube optical interferometer is (7 ± 7) × 10−9 g. The atom interferometer uses velocity-selective stimulated Raman transitions and laser-cooled caesium atoms in an atomic fountain. We extend previous methods of analysing the interferometer to include the effects of a gravitational gradient. We also present detailed experimental and theoretical studies of potential systematic errors and noise sources.