title: Controlling the cold collision shift in high precision atomic interferometry.
abstract: We present a new method based on a transfer of population by adiabatic passage that allows one to prepare cold atomic samples with a well-defined ratio of atomic density and atom number. This method is used to perform a measurement of the cold collision frequency shift in a laser cooled cesium clock at the percent level, which makes the evaluation of the cesium fountain accuracy at the 10(-16) level realistic. With improvements, the adiabatic passage would allow measurements of density-dependent phase shifts at the 10(-3) level in high precision experiments.
authors.affiliation: BNM-SYRTE, Observatoire de Paris, 61 Avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pereira Dos Santos
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Marion
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bize
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sortais
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Clairon
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Salomon