Comparison of 3 absolute gravimeters based on different methods for the e-MASS project

We report on the comparison between three absolute gravimeters that took place in April 2010 at Laboratoire National de M'etrologie et d’Essais. The three instruments (FG5#209 from METAS, Switzerland, IMGC-02 from INRIM, Italy, and CAG from LNE-SYRTE, France) rely on different methods: optical and atomic interferometry. We discuss their differences as well as their similarities. We compare their measurements of the gravitational acceleration in 4 points of the same pillar, in the perspective of an absolute determination of g for a watt balance experiment