The investigation of a μGal-level cold atom gravimeter for field applications

Typical atomic gravimeters have a heavy magnetic shielding to avoid the quadratic Zeeman effect, and also a complicated active vibration isolation system to suppress the vibration noise. Both of them make it difficult to build a mobile and compact gravimeter. In this paper, we present the implementation of an atomic gravimeter aiming at field applications. Our gravimeter uses improved magnetic coils instead of the expensive mu-metal for magnetic shielding. The quadratic Zeeman shift is evaluated with high accuracy. Moreover, a portable platform of relatively small size is applied for vibration isolation. The total interrogation time is optimized to 120 ms and the repetition rate is 2.2 Hz. A sensitivity of 1.0 × 10−7 g Hz−1/2 and a resolution of 5.7 × 10−9 g within 1000 s integration time are reached. A continuous g measurement over 128 h is carried out. Moreover, a whole seismic wave of about 1 h that occurred in Pakistan on 28 September 2013 is recorded by our atomic gravimeter. The results coincide with that recorded by a traditional seismic detector very well.