Rotations play a detrimental role in achieving ultra-high-performance inertial measurements with an atom interferometer, leading potentially to a total loss of interference contrast and the emergence of dominant phase-shift biases. This becomes particularly significant when considering operation in dynamic conditions such as those encountered by Earth-orbiting satellites in the perspective of future space gravity missions onboarding a cold-atom accelerometer. In this context, we perform an experimental study of the impact of rotation on an atom interferometer and investigate mitigation strategies. Using an original setup in which the well-controlled proof mass of a space electrostatic accelerometer is used as the retroreflection mirror of a cold-atom gravimeter, we are able to measure both the contrast and phase shift of the interferometer especially for low and high angular accelerations. Thanks to an analytical model, we are able to explain the origin of the measured contrast loss and phase shifts arising from the different inertial accelerations. By properly counterrotating the electrostatic proof mass, we demonstrated a contrast, otherwise equal to zero, to a level better than 90%, for both constant angular velocities and for important angular accelerations. For constant angular velocities, our model retrieves the experimental data with an error of $25\mathrm{m}\mathrm{rad}$, in agreement with the experimental uncertainty. Our results demonstrate the possibility to perform high-performance inertial measurements with a cold-atom interferometer in challenging environments by demonstrating a high contrast recovery and the precise determination of the rotation-induced phase-shift bias.

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• Cold atoms & matter waves
• Mach-Zehnder atom interferometry
• Quantum sensing