Matter-wave gravimeter with microwave separation at the magic field

A matter-wave gravimeter using first, second, and third microwave fields for the measurement of a local gravitational field, comprising:

• an electronic chip comprising a measurement axis, the electronic chip further comprising at least a first central conducting wire and two lateral waveguides disposed symmetrically on either side of the first conducting wire, the first conducting wire having a first current flowing through it, the first lateral waveguide having a first waveguide current flowing therethrough modulated at a first waveguide microwave frequency to generate the second microwave field and the second lateral waveguide having a second waveguide current flowing therethrough modulated at a second waveguide microwave frequency to generate the third microwave field;
• a vacuum vessel and an assembly of six laser beams combined with a magnetic field gradient generated by coils external to the vacuum vessel configured to capture and for cool a cloud of ultra-cold atoms;
• the first conducting wire configured to generate a magnetostatic field to thereby trap the cloud of atoms;
• a first short duration pulse combining the first microwave field and a radiofrequency field generated by the first conducting wire on the electronic chip to thereby transfer the atoms into a superposition with equal weights of a first internal electronic state called state |1> and of a second internal electronic state called state |2>, driving each atom into the resultant state equal to (|1>+|2>)/√2;
• the second microwave field generated by the first lateral waveguide and/or the third microwave field generated by the second lateral waveguide being configured to separate the atoms into two wave packets during a given period of time under the effect of the second microwave field and/or the third microwave field, the separation into two wave packets resulting in a phase-shift associated with the local gravitational field;
• the cloud of atoms being positioned, prior to separation, above the first conducting wire, the magnetostatic field generated by the first conducting wire being the “magic” magnetostatic field in which the difference in energy between the first internal electronic state and the second internal electronic state is independent, to a first order, of the fluctuations of the magnetostatic field;
• the atoms being recombined by the elimination of the applied microwave fields, the phase shift due to the local gravitational field being converted into a difference of population between the internal states by application of a second pulse of short duration combining a first microwave field and a radiofrequency field generated by the first conducting wire on the electronic chip;
• and
• an imaging sensor associated with a quasi-resonant laser beam configured to detect the atomic cloud using the technique of imaging by absorption.