Wei-Chen Jia

When an aircraft is on final approach or a submarine is navigating blind, the navigator needs an instrument that never loses track of motion. Conventional gyroscopes based on atomic waves are extremely precise, but they have a quirk: the signal repeats like a wallpaper pattern, and after half a step, the pattern starts to look the same. The instrument loses its sense of position.

Atoms in a beam travel at different speeds, like runners on a track. A regular laser pulse only pushes those moving at one speed, but the new one acts like a coach giving commands to the whole group at once. This approach involves more atoms in the measurement.