Important Progress Is Made in Research on High-quality Cold Atom Technology

Date: Sep 22, 2016

    The atomic interference inertia technology, with matter wave as the carrier, can carry out ultra-high-precision measurement of linear acceleration, rotation angle velocity and angular acceleration. Many kinds of ultra-precision measuring instruments, including atomic interference inertia technology-based cold-atom-interference gravimeter, cold-atom-interference gravity gradiometer and cold-atom-intereference gyroscope, etc. are core ones in a series of cutting-edge scientific researches such as basic physics, astronomy, geophysics and space exploration. At present, researches in relevant fields have been actively carried out both at home and abroad, of which USA, Germany and France developed their principle models of clod atom gyro in about 2009 respectively, and conducted researches of engineering experiment; domestically, several units have also carried out researches on cold atom measurement technology, but failed in further improving experiment precision due to limitation of low cold atom flux. Therefore, high-quality cold atom source is of paramount importance to research and development of cold-atom-interference inertia measurement components.

    Research Fellow Wu Yiming with the Optical Orientation Room, Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (XIOPM) has made remarkable achievements in the project of “Research on Atomic Interference Inertia Technology” as an independent “1-3-5” one of XIOPM during the 12th Five-Year Plan period after more than one year of tackling of technological problems, realized breakthrough in series of key technologies of high-flux and high-quality cold atom source, solved thorny problems such as acquisition and maintenance of ultra-high vacuum environment, and design and realization of narrow-line wide-laser system and magnetic field environment control system, etc. and finally obtained high-quality cold atom source with the atom flux of 8×108atom/s and atom temperature of about 9μK, a domestically leading level. The team has also published 4 academic papers (2 collected by SCI and 2 by EI) and applied for 2 patents. The project has been completed and given acceptance recently.

    The achievement has helped XIOPM realize lead-forward development in research on cold atom and laid solid foundation for starting the new research on atom inertia sensor.

 

The cold atomic group prepared in the atomic interferometer


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