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Recent atom interferometry (AI) experiments involving Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) have been conducted under extreme conditions of volume and interrogation time. Numerical solution of the rotating-frame Gross–Pitaevskii equation (RFGPE), which is the standard mean-field theory applied to these experiments, is impractical due to the excessive computation time and memory required. We present a variational model that provides approximate solutions of the RFGPE for a power-law potential on a practical time scale. This model is well-suited to the design and analysis of AI experiments involving BECs that are split and later recombined to form an interference pattern. We derive the equations of motion of the variational parameters for this model and illustrate how the model can be applied to the sequence of steps in a recent AI experiment where BECs were used to implement a dual-Sagnac atom interferometer rotation sensor. We use this model to investigate the impact of finite-size and interaction effects on the single-Sagnac-interferometer phase shift.more » « less
