Absolute Marine and Airborne Gravimetry with Matter-Wave Interferometry

Measuring gravity from an aircraft or a ship is essential in geodesy, geophysics, mineral and hydrocarbon exploration, and navigation. Until now, these surveys were carried out with relative sensors which only measure the variation of gravity and which suffer from drift. For a gravity survey, one needs thus to go regularly to a reference point where the gravity is known or where there is a static absolute gravimeter. Therefore, the use of a relative gravimeter has important operational constraints which increase the time and the cost of gravimetry survey and has measurement errors due to calibration and drift estimation.

Atom interferometry is a promising technology to obtain onboard absolute gravimeter. But, despite high performances obtained in static condition, no precise measurements were reported in dynamic. Here, we present absolute gravity measurements from a ship and an aircraft with a sensor based on atom interferometry.

First, we performed a marine gravity survey in North Atlantic and obtained precision ranging from 0.2 to 0.9 mGal. The atom gravimeter was also compared with a commercial spring gravimeter and showed better performances.

Then, we performed an airborne gravity survey in Iceland (Vatnajökull) and obtained precision ranging from 2 to 4 mGal. The precision of gravity measurements were validated with the comparison to upward continued ground gravity measurements.