Eur. Phys. J. D 42, 455-460 (2007)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2007-00129-2

Interferometric precision measurements with Bose–Einstein condensate solitons formed by an optical lattice

S.I. Vavilov State Optical Institute, Research Institute for Laser Physics, Birzhevaya Line 12, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia

Corresponding author: ^a rozd-yu@mail.ru

Received: 15 November 2005
Revised: 7 July 2006
Published online: 23 March 2007

Abstract

We propose the precision measurement of both angular rotation and of the gradient magnetic of a field based on the use of matter wave interferometers with soliton states of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We consider the formation of these soliton states in a BEC with negative scattering length by an optical lattice produced by two counterpropagating laser beams. We determine the parameters of both the initial condensate and the optical radiation necessary for the formation of coherent solitons. We demonstrate that this interferometer can be used to measure magnetic field gradient with a precision of 10^-2 pT/cm. Our calculations show that the sensitivity of a gyroscope based on a ring, two-port matter wave interferometer can achieve 2.6×10^-7 rad s^-1. The precision of this method is more than ten times greater than in that of rotating interferometer with cooled atoms.