Preparation of cold atom clouds for measuring gravity gradient

Abstract

An apparatus for generating vertically separated atom clouds. The apparatus comprises an optical system comprising an arrangement of lenses and optics. The optical system is configured to trap and cool atoms to form a cold atom cloud; select the hyperfine level of the atoms; trap atoms of the cold atom cloud in a standing wave optical lattice; and vertically split the cold atom cloud into a high cold atom cloud and a low cold atom cloud. The splitting comprises splitting the cold atom cloud into two clouds by launching atoms of the cold atom cloud in opposite directions to form a high cold atom cloud and a low cold atom cloud, and catching the low cold atom cloud up to reach the same velocity as the high cold atom cloud.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.