Confinement effects in a guided-wave atom interferometer with millimeter-scale arm separation

Abstract

Guided-wave atom interferometers measure interference effects using atoms held in a confining potential. In one common implementation, the confinement is primarily two dimensional, and the atoms move along the nearly free dimension after being manipulated by an off-resonant standing wave laser beam. In this configuration, residual confinement along the nominally free axis can introduce a phase gradient to the atoms that limits the arm separation of the interferometer. We experimentally investigate this effect in detail, and show that it can be alleviated by having the atoms undergo a more symmetric motion in the guide. This can be achieved by either using additional laser pulses or by allowing the atoms to freely oscillate in the potential. With these techniques, we demonstrate interferometer measurement times up to $72\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ms}$ and arm separations up to $0.42\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}$ with a well controlled phase, or times of $0.91\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{s}$ and separations of $1.7\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}$ with an uncontrolled phase.