Cold atoms in space

community workshop summary and proposed road-map

authored by

Iván Alonso, Cristiano Alpigiani, Brett Altschul, Henrique Araújo, Gianluigi Arduini, Jan Arlt, Leonardo Badurina, Antun Balaž, Satvika Bandarupally, Barry C. Barish, Michele Barone, Michele Barsanti, Steven Bass, Angelo Bassi, Baptiste Battelier, Charles F.A. Baynham, Quentin Beaufils, Aleksandar Belić, Joel Bergé, Jose Bernabeu, Andrea Bertoldi, Robert Bingham, Sébastien Bize, Diego Blas, Kai Bongs, Philippe Bouyer, Carla Braitenberg, Christian Brand, Claus Braxmaier, Alexandre Bresson, Oliver Buchmueller, Dmitry Budker, Luís Bugalho, Sergey Burdin, Luigi Cacciapuoti, Simone Callegari, Xavier Calmet, Davide Calonico, Benjamin Canuel, Laurentiu Ioan Caramete, Olivier Carraz, Donatella Cassettari, Pratik Chakraborty, Swapan Chattopadhyay, Upasna Chauhan, Xuzong Chen, Yu Ao Chen, Maria Luisa Chiofalo, Jonathon Coleman, Robin Corgier, J. P. Cotter, A. Michael Cruise, Yanou Cui, Gavin Davies, Albert De Roeck, Marcel Demarteau, Andrei Derevianko, Marco Di Clemente, Goran S. Djordjevic, Sandro Donadi, Olivier Doré, Peter Dornan, Michael Doser, Giannis Drougakis, Jacob Dunningham, Sajan Easo, Joshua Eby, Gedminas Elertas, John Ellis, David Evans, Pandora Examilioti, Pavel Fadeev, Mattia Fanì, Farida Fassi, Marco Fattori, Michael A. Fedderke, Daniel Felea, Chen Hao Feng, Jorge Ferreras, Robert Flack, Victor V. Flambaum, René Forsberg, Mark Fromhold, Naceur Gaaloul, Barry M. Garraway, Maria Georgousi, Andrew Geraci, Kurt Gibble, Valerie Gibson, Patrick Gill, Gian F. Giudice, Jon Goldwin, Oliver Gould, Oleg Grachov, Peter W. Graham, Dario Grasso, Paul F. Griffin, Christine Guerlin, Mustafa Gündoğan, Ratnesh K. Gupta, Martin Haehnelt, Ekim T. Hanımeli, Leonie Hawkins, Aurélien Hees, Victoria A. Henderson, Waldemar Herr, Sven Herrmann, Thomas Hird, Richard Hobson, Vincent Hock, Jason M. Hogan, Bodil Holst, Michael Holynski, Ulf Israelsson, Peter Jeglič, Philippe Jetzer, Gediminas Juzeliūnas, Rainer Kaltenbaek, Jernej F. Kamenik, Alex Kehagias, Teodora Kirova, Marton Kiss-Toth, Sebastian Koke, Shimon Kolkowitz, Georgy Kornakov, Tim Kovachy, Markus Krutzik, Mukesh Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Claus Lämmerzahl, Greg Landsberg, Christophe Le Poncin-Lafitte, David R. Leibrandt, Thomas Lévèque, Marek Lewicki, Rui Li, Anna Lipniacka, Christian Lisdat, Mia Liu, J. L. Lopez-Gonzalez, Sina Loriani, Jorma Louko, Giuseppe Gaetano Luciano, Nathan Lundblad, Steve Maddox, M. A. Mahmoud, Azadeh Maleknejad, John March-Russell, Didier Massonnet, Christopher McCabe, Matthias Meister, Tadej Mežnaršič, Salvatore Micalizio, Federica Migliaccio, Peter Millington, Milan Milosevic, Jeremiah Mitchell, Gavin W. Morley, Jürgen Müller, Eamonn Murphy, Özgür E. Müstecaplıoğlu, Val O’Shea, Daniel K.L. Oi, Judith Olson, Debapriya Pal, Dimitris G. Papazoglou, Elizabeth Pasatembou, Mauro Paternostro, Krzysztof Pawlowski, Emanuele Pelucchi, Franck Pereira dos Santos, Achim Peters, Igor Pikovski, Apostolos Pilaftsis, Alexandra Pinto, Marco Prevedelli, Vishnupriya Puthiya-Veettil, John Quenby, Johann Rafelski, Ernst M. Rasel, Cornelis Ravensbergen, Mirko Reguzzoni, Andrea Richaud, Isabelle Riou, Markus Rothacher, Albert Roura, Andreas Ruschhaupt, Dylan O. Sabulsky, Marianna Safronova, Ippocratis D. Saltas, Leonardo Salvi, Muhammed Sameed, Pandey Saurabh, Stefan Schäffer, Stephan Schiller, Manuel Schilling, Vladimir Schkolnik, Dennis Schlippert, Piet O. Schmidt, Harald Schnatz, Jean Schneider, Ulrich Schneider, Florian Schreck, Christian Schubert, Armin Shayeghi, Nathaniel Sherrill, Ian Shipsey, Carla Signorini, Rajeev Singh, Yeshpal Singh, Constantinos Skordis, Augusto Smerzi, Carlos F. Sopuerta, Fiodor Sorrentino, Paraskevas Sphicas, Yevgeny V. Stadnik, Petruta Stefanescu, Marco G. Tarallo, Silvia Tentindo, Guglielmo M. Tino, Jonathan N. Tinsley, Vincenza Tornatore, Philipp Treutlein, Andrea Trombettoni, Yu Dai Tsai, Philip Tuckey, Melissa A. Uchida, Tristan Valenzuela, Mathias Van Den Bossche, Ville Vaskonen, Gunjan Verma, Flavio Vetrano, Christian Vogt, Wolf von Klitzing, Pierre Waller, Reinhold Walser, Eric Wille, Jason Williams, Patrick Windpassinger, Ulrich Wittrock, Peter Wolf, Marian Woltmann, Lisa Wörner, André Xuereb, Mohamed Yahia, Efe Yazgan, Nan Yu, Nassim Zahzam, Emmanuel Zambrini Cruzeiro, Mingsheng Zhan, Xinhao Zou, Jure Zupan, Erik Zupanič

Abstract

We summarise the discussions at a virtual Community Workshop on Cold Atoms in Space concerning the status of cold atom technologies, the prospective scientific and societal opportunities offered by their deployment in space, and the developments needed before cold atoms could be operated in space. The cold atom technologies discussed include atomic clocks, quantum gravimeters and accelerometers, and atom interferometers. Prospective applications include metrology, geodesy and measurement of terrestrial mass change due to, e.g., climate change, and fundamental science experiments such as tests of the equivalence principle, searches for dark matter, measurements of gravitational waves and tests of quantum mechanics. We review the current status of cold atom technologies and outline the requirements for their space qualification, including the development paths and the corresponding technical milestones, and identifying possible pathfinder missions to pave the way for missions to exploit the full potential of cold atoms in space. Finally, we present a first draft of a possible road-map for achieving these goals, that we propose for discussion by the interested cold atom, Earth Observation, fundamental physics and other prospective scientific user communities, together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and national space and research funding agencies.

Organisation(s)

QuantumFrontiers
Quantum Sensing
Institute of Geodesy
Institute of Quantum Optics

External Organisation(s)

University of the Balearic Islands
University of Washington
University of South Carolina
Imperial College London
CERN
Aarhus University
King's College London
University of Belgrade
University of Florence (UniFi)
California Institute of Caltech (Caltech)
National Centre For Scientific Research Demokritos (NCSR Demokritos)
University of Pisa
Kitzbühel Centre for Physics
University of Trieste
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
Institut d'Optique Graduate School (IOTA)
Observatoire de Paris (OBSPARIS)
Université Paris-Saclay
Universitat de Valencia
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
University of Strathclyde
Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)
IFAE - Institute for High Energy Physics
University of Birmingham
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Ulm University
University of Oxford
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
University of California at Berkeley
Universidade de Lisboa
University of Liverpool
European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC)
University of Sussex
Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM)
Institute of Space Science (ISS), Romania
RHEA Group
University of St. Andrews
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab)
Stanford University
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD)
Peking University
University of Science and Technology of China
CAS - Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Sciences (SRCQS)
Sezione di Pisa
University of California at Riverside
University of Antwerp (UAntwerpen)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
University of Nevada, Reno
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI)
University of Nis
Foundation for Research & Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
University of Tokyo
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Mohammed V University in Rabat
Johns Hopkins University
University College London (UCL)
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Technical University of Denmark
University of Nottingham
Northwestern University
Pennsylvania State University
University of Cambridge
National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
Wayne State University
Universite Paris 6
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin)
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST)
University of Bremen
University of Bergen (UiB)
Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI)
Universität Zürich (UZH)
Vilnius University
University of Ljubljana
National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)
University of Latvia
Teledyne e2v
University of Wisconsin
Warsaw University of Technology
University of the Witwatersrand
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Bhopal
Brown University
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES)
University of Warsaw
Purdue University
Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin (DRFZ)
Universitat de Lleida
Bates College
Al-Fayoum University
Politecnico di Milano
University of Manchester
University of Warwick
Koc University
University of Glasgow
ColdQuanta, Inc.
FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics - AMOLF
University of Crete
Queen's University Belfast
Instytut Chemii Bioorganicznej Polskiej Akademii Nauk
University College Cork
School of Business
Stockholm University
Hoursec
University of Bologna
University of Arizona
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati
ETH Zurich
University of Delaware
Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS)
University of Amsterdam
University Hospital Düsseldorf
University of Vienna
Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC)
Sezione di Genova
University of Athens
University of Sydney
Florida State University
University of Basel
University of California at Irvine
Thales
University of Urbino "Carlo Bo"
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Münster University of Applied Sciences
University of Malta
International University of Sarajevo (IUS)
National Taiwan University
Instituto de Telecomunicacoes
Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics Chinese Academy of Sciences
University of Cincinnati
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt PTB

Type

Review article

Journal

EPJ Quantum Technology

Volume

9

No. of pages

55

Publication date

20.11.2022

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Control and Systems Engineering, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Research Area (based on ÖFOS 2012)

Satellite geodesy, Condensed matter, Atomic physics, Electronics

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1140/epjqt/s40507-022-00147-w (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.15488/13589 (Access: Open)