Scheme for suppressing atom expansion induced contrast loss in atom interferometers

Abstract The loss of contrast due to atom expansion induced non-perfect Raman pulse area in atom interferometers is investigated systematically. Based on the theoretical simulation, we find that the expansion of the atomic cloud results in a decrease of the π pulse fidelity and a change of the π pulse duration, which lead to a significant reduction in fringe contrast. We propose a mitigation strategy of increasing the intensities of the second and third Raman pulses. Simulation results show that the fringe contrast can be improved by 13.6% in a typical atom interferometer gravimeter using this intensity compensation strategy. We also evaluate the effects of this mitigation strategy in the case of a lower atomic cloud temperature and a larger Raman beam size under different Raman pulse time interval conditions. This mitigation strategy has potential applications in increasing the sensitivity of atom interferometer-based precision measuring, including precision measuring of the gravity, gravity gradient, rotation, and magnetic field gradient, as well as testing of the Einstein equivalence principle.