Wen-Jie Xu, Min-Kang Zhou,* Miao-Miao Zhao, Ke Zhang, and Zhong-Kun Hu†
MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurements, Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China (Received 14 June 2017; published 5 December 2017)
Matter-wave sensors with cold atoms have progressed tremendously over recent decades. We report a sensitive tilt sensor based on quantum technology employing cold atoms. This quantum tiltmeter is constructed with the configuration of a Ramsey-Bordé atom interferometer, achieving an improvement of nearly three orders of magnitude for tilt measurements with a short-term sensitivity of 1.3 μrad/Hz1/2, with resolution down to 55 nrad at an integration time of 1000 s. The deformation of the Earth’s surface has been monitored in a continuous run of 31 h, showing that a quantum tiltmeter can be applied to record tilt tides and can be an valuable sensor in geophysics and various scientific facilities.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.96.063606
