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Absolute gravity measurements at the level of 1 Gal using cold atom quantum technology have been demonstrated in the laboratory in 1992 and have ever since received an increasing interest from the geophysics community 1. In 2015, Exail launched on the marketplace the Absolute Quantum Gravimeter (AQG) 2. Cutting-edge technology developments brought the necessary easy-of-use, autonomy, and robustness for field deployment. More than 15 units have since been produced for various geophysical applications, including hydrology and volcanology. Designed for field applications with autonomous or remote-controlled operation, the AQG does not require heavy vibration isolation equipment thanks to an integrated real time vibration compensation module which hybridizes the quantum measurement with a built-in classical accelerometer. As a result, all units reproducibly achieve a resolution of 10-9 g after < 2 hours of measurement at our inner-city factory site or after < 40 minutes at a quiet site, as we will demonstrate in this talk 2,4. Moreover, we will present recent progress on the AQG including a gravity measurement campaign that has been on-going for 3 years now near the summit of Mt Etna 3,4. Finally, we will detail our study of systematic effects affecting the instrument, whose evaluation is required to build a rigorous accuracy (or trueness) budget. 1 M. Kasevich, S. Chu. Measurement of the gravitational acceleration of an atom with a light-pulse atom interferometer. Applied Physics B, 1992, vol. 54, p. 321-332.2 V. Mnoret et al, Gravity measurements below 10-9 g with a transportable absolute quantum gravimeter. Scientific Reports, 2018, 8, pp.12300.3 L. Antoni-Micollier et al Detecting volcano-related underground mass changes with a quantum gravimeter. Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 49, issue 13, e2022GL097814 (2022).4 L. Antoni-Micollier et al, Absolute quantum gravimeters and gradiometers for field measurements. IEEE Instrumentation Measurement Magazine (submitted).
Richard et al. (Fri,) studied this question.