Atom interferometers require both high efficiency and robust performance in their mirror pulses under experimental inhomogeneities. In this work, we demonstrated that a quantum optimal-control-designed mirror pulse significantly enhances interferometer performance by using an adaptive sliced structure. Using gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE), an optimized mirror pulse for a Mach-Zehnder light-pulse atom interferometer was designed by discretizing the control into nonuniform phase slices. This design broadened the tolerence to experimentally relevant variations in detuning $[-{\mathrm{\Omega }}_0,{\mathrm{\Omega }}_0]$ and Rabi frequency $[0.1\times {\mathrm{\Omega }}_0,1.9\times {\mathrm{\Omega }}_0]$ (${\mathrm{\Omega }}_0=2\pi \times 25\mathrm{kHz}$), while maintaining high transfer efficiency even when the response-time delays up to 1.6 $\mu \mathrm{s}$. The optimized pulse was found to be robust to coupling inhomogeneity and velocity spread, offering a significant improvement in robustness over the conventional pulse. The adaptive pulse slicing method provides a minimalist strategy that reduces experimental complexity while enhancing robustness and scalability, offering an innovative scheme for quantum optimal control in high-precision atom interferometry.

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• Atom interferometry
• Quantum control