Viability of rotation sensing using phonon interferometry in Bose-Einstein condensates
Charles W. Woffinden, Andrew J. Groszek, Guillaume Gauthier, Bradley J. Mommers, Michael. W. J. Bromley, Simon A. Haine, Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Matthew J. Davis, Tyler W. Neely, Mark Baker, SciPost Phys. 15, 128 (2023) - Published 2 October 2023
We demonstrate the use of a ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate as a rotation sen- sor by measuring the interference between two counter-propagating phonon modes im- printed azimuthally around the ring. We observe rapid decay of the excitations, quan- tified by quality factors of at most Q ≈ 27. We numerically model our experiment using the c-field methodology, allowing us to estimate the parameters that maximise the per- formance of our sensor. We explore the damping mechanisms underlying the observed phonon decay, and identify two distinct Landau scattering processes that each domi- nate at different driving amplitudes and temperatures. Our simulations reveal that Q is limited by strong damping of phonons even in the zero temperature limit. We perform an experimental proof-of-principle rotation measurement using persistent currents im- printed around the ring. We demonstrate a rotation sensitivity of up to ∆Ω ≈ 0.3 rad s−1 from a single image, with a theoretically achievable value of ∆Ω ≈ 0.04 rad s−1 in the atomic shot-noise limit. This is a significant improvement over the shot-noise-limited ∆Ω ≈ 1 rad s−1 sensitivity obtained by Marti et al. [1] for a similar setup.