US Patent Issued to The Regents of The University of Michigan on Oct. 21 for "Tractor atom interferometry" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,451,267, issued on Oct. 21, was assigned to The Regents of The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

"Tractor atom interferometry" was invented by Georg A. Raithel (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and Alisher Duspayev (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method is presented for measuring motion of a moving body using an atom interferometer. The method includes: positioning at least one atom in a cavity of the atom interferometer, where the atom interferometer is attached to the moving body; splitting the at least one atom into a pair of wave-function components; guiding the pair of wave-function components along respective paths in ...