DETERMINATION OF THE PERIOD OF A TORSION PENDULUM BY THE FITTING METHOD IN REAL TIME

A phenomenological study on the fitting method in real time has been done, and the method was applied to process and analyze the extensive data of a long period torsion pendulum used to determine Newtonian gravitational constant G. The result shows that the fitting method in real time is effective to determine the period of a torsion pendulum with a relative precision of 10^-5 orders.     

OPTIMUM DURATION OF MEASUREMENT FOR REDUCING THERMAL NOISE LIMITATIONS IN TORSION PENDULUM EXPERIMENTS

Statistical estimates of thermal noise fluctuation of a linear harmonic oscillator used to detect weak forces are reexamined with special reference to gravitational experiments. Thermal noise limitation on the measurement of displacement of an oscillator is studied. It is found that the signal response of an oscillator reaches the maximum value while the thermal noise response reaches the minimum value at the same time during the transient state of the oscillator, and the precision of the experiments in the transient state could increase about two orders higher than that in the equilibrium state for typical experiments. It is also found that there is an optimum duration of measurement in which the uncertainty due to thermal noise in this period is the least.     

Effect of Raman-pulse duration related to the magnetic field gradient in high-precision atom gravimeters

The effect of the Raman-pulse duration related to the magnetic field gradient, as a systematic error, is playing an important role on evaluating the performance of high-precision atomic gravimeters. We study this effect with a simplified theoretical model of the time-propagation operator. According to the typical parameters, we find that this effect should be taken into account when the gravimeter reaches an accuracy of 10~(-10)g, and the larger the pulse duration is, the more obvious the systematic effect will be. Finally, we make a simple discussion on the possibility of testing this effect.     

Comparison of the sensitivities for atom interferometers in two different operation methods

We investigated the sensitivities of atom interferometers in the usual fringe-scanning method(FSM) versus the fringelocking method(FLM). The theoretical analysis shows that for typical noises in atom interferometers, the FSM will degrade the sensitivity while the FLM does not. The sensitivity-improvement factor of the FLM over the FSM depends on the type of noises, which is validated by numerical simulations. The detailed quantitative analysis on this fundamental issue is presented, and our analysis is readily extendable to other kinds of noises as well as other fringe shapes in addition to a cosine one.     

An Abnormal Vibrational Mode of Torsion Pendulum

In the experiment for the determination of the gravitational constant G,we found an abnormal vibrational mode of the torsion pendulum.The abnormal mode disappeared as a magnetic damper was introduced to the torsion pendulum system.Our experimental results also show that the magnetic damper can be used to suppress the high frequency vibrational noises to torsion pendulums effectively.     

Precise Measurement of Separation Between Two Spherical Source Masses

A driving gauge method is performed to determine the separation between two spherical source masses in the measurement of Newtonian gravitational constant G. The experimental result shows that the uncertainty of determining the separation is about 0.351μm, which would contribute an uncertainty of 7.3 ppm to the value of G.     

万有引力常数G精确测量实验进展

万有引力常数G是人类历史上引入的第一个基本物理学常数,其在理论物理、天体物理和地球物理等许多领域中扮演着重要角色.两百多年来,人们共测量出了200多个G值,但G的测量精度仍然是所有物理学常数中最差的,这一现象反映了测G工作本身的复杂性和困难性.本文简要概述了G值测量的意义和测G的历史,并结合自2010年以来国际上新出现的三个高精度测G实验介绍这一领域的研究进展,以及华中科技大学引力实验中心测G工作的最新动态.     

Common-mode noise rejection using fringe-locking method in WEP test by simultaneous dual-species atom interferometers

We theoretically investigate the application of the fringe-locking method(FLM) in the dual-species quantum test of the weak equivalence principle(WEP).With the FLM,the measurement is performed invariably at the midfringe,and the extraction of the phase shift for atom interferometers is linearized.For the simultaneous interferometers,this linearization enables a good common-mode rejection of vibration noise,which is usually the main limit for high precision WEP tests of the dual-species kind.We note that this method also allows for an unbiased determination of the gravity accelerations difference,which meanwhile is ready to be implemented.     

Three-dimensional hexapole focusing of pulsed molecular beam for state selection

We theoretically investigate three-dimensional(3D) focusing of pulsed molecular beam using a series of hexapoles with different orientations. Transversely oriented hexapoles provide both the transverse and longitudinal focusing force and a longitudinally oriented one provides only the transverse force. The hexapole focusing position are designed to realize the simultaneous focusing in three directions. The additional longitudinal focusing compared with the conventional hexapole can suppress the effect of chromatic aberration induced by the molecular longitudinal velocity spread, thus improving the state-selection purity as well as the beam density. Performance comparison of state selection between this 3D focusing hexapole and a conventional one is made using numerical trajectory simulations, choosing CHF_3 molecules as a tester. It is confirmed that our proposal can improve the state-selection purity from 68.2% to 96.1% and the beam density by a factor of 2.3.