Ultracold Atom on Sounding Rocket Presented for the First Time in Space, Gauging Earth's Gravity

Researchers recently presented an ultracold atom on a sounding rocket, and further rocket missions, reports said, set to follow.

A SciTechDaily report specified that extremely exact measurements are possible through the use of atom interferometers that employ the atoms' character for this particular purpose.

This can, therefore, be utilized, for instance, to gauge the Earth's gravitational field or to identify gravitational waves.

Now a team of scientists from Germany has managed to perform successfully, for the first time, atom interferometry in space onboard a sounding rocket.

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Atom Interferometry

According to the Professor Patrick Windpassinger of the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, they have established the technological basis for interferometry on a sounding rocket's board and demonstrated that such trials are not just possible on this planet but in space, as well.

Winpassinger's team was involved in the study, Ultracold Atom Interferometry Demonstrated in Space for the First Time, in which findings of their analyses came out in Nature Communications.

In connection to this, a research team coming from different universities and research centers headed by Leibniz University Hannover inaugurated the MAIUS-1 mission in 2017.

This has since turned out to be the pioneering rocket mission on which a Bose-Einstein condensate has been produced in space. Essentially, this special state of matter, according to Britannica, takes place when atoms, in this circumstance, atoms of rubidium, are cooled to a temperature almost absolute zero, or minus 273 degrees Celsius.

Ultracold Ensemble

Windpassinger explained, for them, such an ultracold ensemble signified a very auspicious "starting pint from atom interferometry."

In addition, the temperature is among the determining factors since measurements can be done more precisely for a more extended time at lower temperatures.

During the trials, the rubidium atoms' gas was separated through the use of laser light irradiation and then superpositioned successively.

Depending on the forces that act on the atoms on their varying paths, numerous interference patterns can be generated, which in turn can be used to measure the forces that impact them, like gravity, for one.

This research initially established the consistency or intrusion capability of the Bose-Einstein condensate as a primarily necessitated property of the atomic ensemble.

To this end, the atoms in the interferometer were just partly superimposed by means of changing the light sequence, which, in this case of consistency, resulted in the yielding of spatial intensity modulation.

Therefore, the study authors have confirmed the concept's validity, which may result in further trials that target the measurement of the gravitational field of Earth, the gravitational waves detection, and the test of the equivalence principle of Einstein.

MAIUS-2 and MAIUS-3

As indicated in this report, even more measurements will be plausible upon the launch of MAIUS-2 and MAIUS-3. Later on, the research team wants to go further and examine the viability of high-precision atom interferometry to test the principle of equivalence of Einstein.

Phys.org reported that two more launches of rockets, MAIUS-2 and MAIUS-3, are slated for 2022 and 2023, respectively. During these missions, the team intends to use potassium atoms and rubidium atoms to generate intrusion patterns.

Through comparison of free fall acceleration of the two atom types, a trial of the equivalence principle with formerly unachievable precision can be expedited.

According to Dr. André Wenzlawski, who's part of the research team of Windpassinger at JG and is directly involved in the launch missions, undertaking this kind of experimentation would be a future goal on the International Space Station or satellites, perhaps, within the Bose-Einstein Condensate and Cold Atom Laboratory or BECCAL, which is presently in the planning stage.

In this circumstance, the attainable accuracy would not be controlled by the limited free-fall aboard a rocket, Wenzlawski explained.

A related report is shown on SimplyInfo's YouTube video below: