TY - JOUR

T1 - Simulation-based evaluation of a cold atom interferometry gradiometer concept for gravity field recovery

AU - Douch, Karim

AU - Wu, Hu

AU - Schubert, Christian

AU - Müller, Jürgen

AU - Pereira dos Santos, Franck

N1 - Funding information: This study was supported by the European Space Agency through Contract No. 4000112677/14/NL/MP. The authors would like to thank all the collaborators of the project, in particular Baptiste Battelier, Andrea Bertoldi, Sven Herrmannn, Merle Cornelius, Naceur Gaaloul, Dennis Becker, Ernst Rasel and Norman Guerlebeck. Comments and feedbacks from Christian Siemes were greatly appreciated. K. Douch, J. Müller, C. Schubert and H. Wu also acknowledge the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 1128 geo-Q, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). C. Schubert would like to thank Sven Abend for comments and acknowledges financial support from ”Niedersächsisches Vorab” through the ”Quantum and Nano- Metrology (QUANOMET)” initiative within the project QT3.

PY - 2017/12/9

Y1 - 2017/12/9

N2 - The prospects of future satellite gravimetry missions to sustain a continuous and improved observation of the gravitational field have stimulated studies of new concepts of space inertial sensors with potentially improved precision and stability. This is in particular the case for cold-atom interferometry (CAI) gradiometry which is the object of this paper. The performance of a specific CAI gradiometer design is studied here in terms of quality of the recovered gravity field through a closed-loop numerical simulation of the measurement and processing workflow. First we show that mapping the time-variable field on a monthly basis would require a noise level below 5mE/Hz. The mission scenarios are therefore focused on the static field, like GOCE. Second, the stringent requirement on the angular velocity of a one-arm gradiometer, which must not exceed 10 -6 rad/s, leads to two possible modes of operation of the CAI gradiometer: the nadir and the quasi-inertial mode. In the nadir mode, which corresponds to the usual Earth-pointing satellite attitude, only the gradient V yy , along the cross-track direction, is measured. In the quasi-inertial mode, the satellite attitude is approximately constant in the inertial reference frame and the 3 diagonal gradients V xx ,V yy and V zz are measured. Both modes are successively simulated for a 239 km altitude orbit and the error on the recovered gravity models eventually compared to GOCE solutions. We conclude that for the specific CAI gradiometer design assumed in this paper, only the quasi-inertial mode scenario would be able to significantly outperform GOCE results at the cost of technically challenging requirements on the orbit and attitude control.

AB - The prospects of future satellite gravimetry missions to sustain a continuous and improved observation of the gravitational field have stimulated studies of new concepts of space inertial sensors with potentially improved precision and stability. This is in particular the case for cold-atom interferometry (CAI) gradiometry which is the object of this paper. The performance of a specific CAI gradiometer design is studied here in terms of quality of the recovered gravity field through a closed-loop numerical simulation of the measurement and processing workflow. First we show that mapping the time-variable field on a monthly basis would require a noise level below 5mE/Hz. The mission scenarios are therefore focused on the static field, like GOCE. Second, the stringent requirement on the angular velocity of a one-arm gradiometer, which must not exceed 10 -6 rad/s, leads to two possible modes of operation of the CAI gradiometer: the nadir and the quasi-inertial mode. In the nadir mode, which corresponds to the usual Earth-pointing satellite attitude, only the gradient V yy , along the cross-track direction, is measured. In the quasi-inertial mode, the satellite attitude is approximately constant in the inertial reference frame and the 3 diagonal gradients V xx ,V yy and V zz are measured. Both modes are successively simulated for a 239 km altitude orbit and the error on the recovered gravity models eventually compared to GOCE solutions. We conclude that for the specific CAI gradiometer design assumed in this paper, only the quasi-inertial mode scenario would be able to significantly outperform GOCE results at the cost of technically challenging requirements on the orbit and attitude control.

KW - Closed-loop simulation

KW - Cold atom interferometry

KW - Gravity field recovery

KW - Space gravity gradiometry

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042356920&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.asr.2017.12.005

DO - 10.1016/j.asr.2017.12.005

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85042356920

VL - 61

SP - 1307

EP - 1323

JO - Advances in space research

JF - Advances in space research

SN - 0273-1177

IS - 5

ER -