Point source atom interferometry with a cloud of finite size

We demonstrate a two axis gyroscope by the use of light pulse atom interferometry with an expanding cloud of atoms in the regime where the cloud has expanded by 1.1-5 times its initial size during the interrogation. Rotations are measured by analyzing spatial fringe patterns in the atom population obtained by imaging the final cloud. The fringes arise from a correlation between an atom's initial velocity and its final position. This correlation is naturally created by the expansion of the cloud, but it also depends on the initial atomic distribution. We show that the frequency and contrast of these spatial fringes depend on the details of the initial distribution and develop an analytical model to explain this dependence. We also discuss several challenges that must be overcome to realize a high-performance gyroscope with this technique.