Abstract

The field of atom interferometry¹ is interesting since the potential sensitivity of matter-wave interferometers far exceeds that of their light-wave antecedents.² As was emphasized at the recent Solvay conference on quantum optics, there is at present no paradigm available for calculating the quantum noise limits to matter-wave interferometers.³ We show that the phase uncertainty is inversely proportional to the square root of the total number, rather than the mean number, of atoms in the interferometert.⁴ We find that a matter-wave interferometer used as a gyroscope can be expected to be more sensitive to rotation by some four orders of magnitude than present laser gyro devices.

© 1993 Optical Society of America