Phononic gravity gradiometry with Bose-Einstein condensates

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Gravity gradiometry with Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) has reached unprecedented precisions.

• The basis of this technique is the measurement of differential forces by interference of single-atom wave functions.
• In this article, we propose a gradiometry scheme where phonons, the collective oscillations of a trapped BEC's atoms are used instead.
• We show that our scheme could, in principle, enable high-precision measurements of gravity gradients of bodies such as the Earth or small spheres with masses down to the milligram scale.