Compact Velocimeter Based on Large Fizeau’s Light-dragging Effect

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For a new era of driverless mobility and GPS-independent navigation in metropolis of the future, new types of sensors are necessary that can meet stringent requirements for position and velocity determination in the form of the smallest and most robust components. While classic solutions come up against hard limits, atomic quantum inertial sensors already offer sensitivities and accuracies beyond existing solutions, but they are limited in the accessible bandwidths and still bulky.In this project, we will develop a compact, ruggedized optical velocimeter and demonstrate the operating principle in a joint Taiwan-German measurement campaign. In contrast to (ultra-)cold atom based quantum inertial sensors, the underlying concept is not based on the generation of low expansion atomic clouds requiring highly sophisticated vacuum chambers and additional lasers for atom cooling but it is based on room-temperature thermal atoms in a compact vapor cell and therefore dramatically simplifying the experimental setup. In order to further miniaturize these sensors by several orders of magnitude and allow for future manufacturing in industry-scale quantities at low costs, wafer-based mass production is the key for carrying the applications of these sensors into everyday society.We will exploit the large Fizeau’s light-dragging effect based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a compact vapor cell and develop an experiment to demonstrate the first velocimeter of its kind. In particular, one main goal of this project will be increasing the sensitivity of this device by 3 orders of magnitude compared to the first fundamental demonstration of the Taiwanese PI , along with improvement of compactness of the setup due to vacuum-compatible integration technologies and expertise in precision spectroscopy of alkali vapors of the German PI. Further, we will study possibilities for photonic-electronic integration concepts for this type of velocimeter as a building block for the development and evolution of novel sensors for navigation.