Atom gravimeter - a competitor to optical gravimeter

Precision gravity measurement is an indispensable means to obtain the basic data of the Earth's gravity field. It has important strategic significance and is widely used in geophysics, resource exploration, earthquake prediction, defense, science and other fields. Traditional high-precision, highly time continuous gravity measurements rely primarily on imported absolute gravimeters to periodically calibrate relative gravimeters. However, absolute gravimeters are expensive, inconvenient to maintain, and easily blocked by technology. Based on the new principles and methods, NIM has successfully developed a movable helium atomic interference gravimeter over five years. The device has higher measurement sensitivity and a long-term stability. It participated in the International Comparison of Absolute Gravimeters (ICAG) in 2017, its measurement uncertainty has ranked the second among all gravimeters, its repeatability raking the first, which symbolizes a great leap forward of NIM in the field of atomic interference precision measurement.

Fig. The atom gravimeter of NIM
Fig. The atom gravimeter of NIM