106 research outputs found
The Role of Source Coherence in Atom Interferometery
The role of source cloud spatial coherence in a Mach-Zehnder type atom
interferometer is experimentally investigated. The visibility and contrast of a
Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and three thermal sources with varying spatial
coherence are compared as a function of interferometer time. At short times,
the fringe visibility of a BEC source approaches 100 % nearly independent of pi
pulse efficiency, while thermal sources have fringe visibilities limited to the
mirror efficiency. More importantly for precision measurement systems, the BEC
source maintains interference at interferometer times significantly beyond the
thermal source
80hk Momentum Separation with Bloch Oscillations in an Optically Guided Atom Interferometer
We demonstrate phase sensitivity in a horizontally guided,
acceleration-sensitive atom interferometer with a momentum separation of 80hk
between its arms. A fringe visibility of 7% is observed. Our coherent pulse
sequence accelerates the cold cloud in an optical waveguide, an inherently
scalable route to large momentum separation and high sensitivity. We maintain
coherence at high momentum separation due to both the transverse confinement
provided by the guide, and our use of optical delta-kick cooling on our
cold-atom cloud. We also construct a horizontal interferometric gradiometer to
measure the longitudinal curvature of our optical waveguide.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
A Bright Solitonic Matter-Wave Interferometer
We present the first realisation of a solitonic atom interferometer. A
Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms of rubidium-85 is loaded into a
horizontal optical waveguide. Through the use of a Feshbach resonance, the
-wave scattering length of the Rb atoms is tuned to a small negative
value. This attractive atomic interaction then balances the inherent
matter-wave dispersion, creating a bright solitonic matter wave. A Mach-Zehnder
interferometer is constructed by driving Bragg transitions with the use of an
optical lattice co-linear with the waveguide. Matter wave propagation and
interferometric fringe visibility are compared across a range of -wave
scattering values including repulsive, attractive and non-interacting values.
The solitonic matter wave is found to significantly increase fringe visibility
even compared with a non-interacting cloud.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Viability of bridge inspectors determining defect ratings using photographic images
The visual inspection of bridges is a major undertaking for asset owners and operators. In the UK, visual inspections require inspectors to visit bridges on site and often at night and under unfavourable weather conditions. Therefore, it would be beneficial to move some of the visual inspection process off site. This paper studies whether the defect classification aspects of the inspection process could be conducted remotely using photographs. This study examines the defect ratings assigned by ten survey participants who were tasked with examining photographs from visual inspections of ten UK bridges. The survey results were compared with the results from the general inspections previously carried out for the bridges in question. From this data set, the differences in the ratings given and the extent to which defects are missed were examined. The results show that a higher number of defects were identified for a given bridge by the remote inspectors. Statistical analysis shows that aggregated defects rated by off-site inspectors tend to be more severe and of a higher priority rating compared with those from the on-site inspectors. The results also indicate that there is closer agreement between on-site and off-site inspectors for defects of a higher severity rating.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Hydraulic Structures and Flood Ris
A survey of emerging technologies for the future of routine visual inspection of bridge structures
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