Control of atomic path in projectile cold atom gyroscope

Abstract

Cold atoms possess low velocity, narrow velocity distribution as well as good matter wave coherence, thus they have been used to achieve cold atom interferometers. The interferometers with Sagnac effect form atom gyroscopes which can measure rotation rate accurately. Here we report our recent progress in building a projectile cold atom gyroscope. We achieve the accurate control of the bidirectional projectile cold atom motion through the use of a homemade direct digital frequency synthesizer.