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  • Open Access

Enhancing supercurrent-based inertial sensing via interactions in atomtronic angular accelerometers

S. Carmona-López1, A. Matos-Abiague2, F. Isaule1, and L. Morales-Molina1

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033316 – Published 15 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zzx2-tttb

Abstract

We theoretically investigate supercurrents of ultracold atoms in angularly ac-shaken ring lattices subjected to external rotation. Our results demonstrate how these supercurrents can be harnessed for the development of high-precision atomtronic angular accelerometers. Using both analytical and numerical approaches within the Bose-Hubbard model framework, we demonstrate that a significant net atomic current arises when the lattice driving frequency is tuned to an integer fraction of the Bloch frequency, while the current averages to nearly zero away from such a resonance. In the single-particle regime, the resonance width scales inversely with the averaging time, thereby setting a fundamental Fourier-limited bound on the measurement's sensitivity. Strikingly, our numerical simulations demonstrate that this Fourier limit—a fundamental barrier in the noninteracting system—can be surpassed by introducing weak interactions between atoms. In the interacting regime, the sensitivity surpasses the Fourier-limited scaling with the averaging time achieving an improvement of at least 2 orders of magnitude over the single-particle scenario, and exceeding the performance of previously proposed ultracold-atom-based angular accelerometers. These findings pave the way for developing new atomic-current-based inertial sensors with interaction-enhanced sensitivity.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033316– Published 15 September, 2026
  • Received 2 May 2026
  • Accepted 26 August 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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