AIP Advances (Nov 2021)

A car-based portable atom gravimeter and its application in field gravity survey

  • Jiong-Yang Zhang,
  • Wen-Jie Xu,
  • Shi-Da Sun,
  • Yu-Biao Shu,
  • Qin Luo,
  • Yuan Cheng,
  • Zhong-Kun Hu,
  • Min-Kang Zhou

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0068761
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 11
pp. 115223 – 115223-7

Abstract

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As a novel instrument for measuring absolute gravity, the atom gravimeter has shown high sensitivity and stability in the past three decades. In this work, we report a car-based portable atom gravimeter whose sensitivity is at the level of 1.9mGal/Hz (1 Gal = 0.01 m/s2) both for lab and outdoor measurements. Its resolution can reach 30 μGal within an integration time of 10 000 s when located in a quiet place. During four months of gravity observation, there is no drift for the measurement result, showing that this car-based gravimeter has a competitive advantage at long term stability. By using this car-based atom gravimeter in the open air, the field gravity measurements with sub-mGal performance have been demonstrated in the mountain gravity survey. According to the gravity measurement results from our car-based atom gravimeter, the density distribution of this mountain is inverted, which is consistent with the result from the geological exploration.