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Noise resilience in a high-bandwidth atom interferometer

Jonathan M. Kwolek1,*, Sunil Upadhyay2, and Adam T. Black1

  • 1U.S. Naval Research Lab, 4555 Overlook Ave SW, Washington, DC 20375, USA
  • 2Amentum, 4800 Westfields Blvd, Suite #400, Chantilly, VA 20151, USA

  • *Contact author: jonathan.m.kwolek.civ@us.navy.mil
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Phys. Rev. Applied 24, 034041 – Published 17 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/m7tr-tm4w

Abstract

The utility of inertial sensors depends on resilience against real-world dynamics and noise. Atom interferometry offers a sensing technology with the advantages of good long-term stability, high sensitivity, and accuracy. High measurement bandwidth improves an atom interferometer’s ability to reject errors due to dynamics and noise. Here we demonstrate resilience against time-varying environmental noise by rapidly switching the direction of inertial sensitivity in the atom interferometer through a common technique known as k-reversal. We demonstrate sub-interrogation-time k-reversal at 592 Hz in a cold-beam atomic interferometer with an inverse interrogation time of 148 Hz. The interferometer fringe output is read out continuously and postprocessed using nonlinear Kalman filters to determine both the inertial and error contributions to the output phase. The resulting power spectral densities show a significant reduction of phase error due to a noisy magnetic field as the k-reversal frequency increases.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 24, 034041– Published 17 September, 2025
  • Received 11 April 2025
  • Revised 28 July 2025
  • Accepted 14 August 2025
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