Rotating matter-wave beam splitters and consequences for atom gyrometers

Abstract

The effect of a rotation on a matter-wave-laser beam splitter is studied and modeled. This modeling is shown to give important nontrivial corrections to the Sagnac phase shift of matter-wave gyrometers when the duration of the laser action cannot be neglected with respect to the propagation time between beam splitters. This result is illustrated on a Mach-Zehnder atom gyrometer (rate gyroscope) with running laser beam splitters. A quasiclassical description of the interferometer arms inside the beam splitters is proposed to interpret the corrected Sagnac phase shift in terms of an effective interferometer area. © 2007 The American Physical Society.