Atom Interferometers with Scalable Enclosed Area

Bloch oscillations (i.e., coherent acceleration of matter waves by an optical lattice) and Bragg diffraction are integrated into light-pulse atom interferometers with large momentum splitting between the interferometer arms, and hence enhanced sensitivity. Simultaneous acceleration of both arms in the same internal states suppresses systematic effects, and simultaneously running a pair of interferometers suppresses the effect of vibrations. Ramsey-Borde interferometers using four such Bloch-Bragg-Bloch beam splitters exhibit 15% contrast at 24(ℎ/2π)k splitting, the largest so far ((ℎ/2π)k is the photon momentum); single beam splitters achieve 88(ℎ/2π)k. The prospects for reaching 100 s of (ℎ/2π)k and applications such as gravitational wave sensors are discussed.