Cold-atom measurement of the gravitational constant

In 2014, Gabriele Rosi and colleagues used atom interferometry: two rubidium-87 clouds prepared by laser cooling in vacuum, $328\mathrm{mm}$ apart, received shared three-pulse Raman transitions spaced by $160\mathrm{ms}$. Fluorescence readout and paired-fringe ellipse fitting yielded differential wave phase. Twenty-four tungsten alloy cylinders, about $516\mathrm{kg}$ total, moved between C and F. Cloud subtraction rejected shared vibration; configuration subtraction isolated the source change.^[ref]

Calibration used timed flight and light-sheet crossings; mirror tilt compensated Earth rotation. Wave vector reversal rejected unwanted shifts. Modeling included source Newtonian gravitational potential, atom trajectories, cloud distributions and moving supports. Source positioning, mass density variation and cloud geometry limited the reported combined relative standard uncertainty to $150$ parts per million.^[ref]

To understand the subtraction without reproducing that full analysis, consider an ideal atom interferometer in uniform vertical acceleration during each pulse sequence. Let $k_{\mathrm{eff}}$ be its signed effective vertical wave vector component and $T$ the pulse spacing. Its acceleration-dependent wave phase is $\varphi \simeq k_{\mathrm{eff}}g{T}^2$; labels U and L denote upper and lower clouds. The double difference is thenA background field identical in C and F cancels even if it differs between the two clouds. In a fixed-geometry, linear-response model, write $S=G\mathcal{K}$, where $\mathcal{K}$ is calculated from the source mass density, calibrated pulse sequence and atom trajectories. Thus $G_{\mathrm{inferred}}=S/\mathcal{K}$. Measuring wave phase accurately is one part of the task; calculating $\mathcal{K}$ accurately is another. The real nonuniform field and finite clouds require the trajectory-dependent analysis described above rather than this uniform-field approximation.