Atom interferometry in microgravity on long time scales

Atom interferometry allows for precise quantum sensors with a wide range of applications including geodesy and tests of fundamental physics such as Einstein’s equivalence principle.

Long free propagation times are one key-element to achieve high sensitivities, but it’s strongly limited by gravity. Therefore, space-based experiments are of special interest.

QUANTUS-2 is an experiment created as a testbed for future space missions. It performs atom interferometry on long time scales under microgravity at the ZARM drop tower in Bremen.

Slowly expanding Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs) are another critical key-element in order to be able to detect the atoms after long time of flights.

Using a quadrupole enhanced magnetic lens, we are able to reduce the total effective kinetic energy of the BEC in three dimensions down to 3/2 kB*38 pK [1].

In this talk, we give an overview of the QUANTUS-2 setup & environment and present the latest results on single species interferometry experiments, including interferometer times of 2T > 1 second.