Quantum absolute gravimeter designed for field surveys

Gravity exploration and monitoring have the potential to transform a wide range of commercial and scientific applications, including geodesy, hydrography, resource exploration, navigation, civil engineering, and long-term observation of subsurface dynamics.
 
At Nomad Atomics, we are developing compact, drift-free, quantum gravity sensors. Our cold atom-based sensor is designed to overcome the key limitations of existing commercial instruments, i.e., combining the stability and accuracy of absolute gravimeters with the portability and accessibility of relative gravimeters. Our continuous efforts to reduce the size and weight of our sensor to a volume <20 L and a weight <20 kg, with, e.g. our collaboration with Fraunhofer IZM to integrate our optics in a glass chip [1], make our quantum absolute gravimeter ideal for large scale surveying and monitoring applications.
 
In this talk, we will report on the latest development of our compact survey-style absolute quantum gravimeters. We will discuss the usage of this sensor for groundwater monitoring in the Berlin-Brandenburg area [2] and present preliminary performances comparison with the state-of-the-art GAIN absolute quantum sensor from Humboldt University.
 
[1]: IBB ProFit Program, Grant 10206866
[2]: BMBF Project ATOMAQUA (https://www.quantensysteme.info/projektatlas/projekte/q/atomaqua)