All-optical Atomic Magnetometer Research Articles

Experimental Investigation on a Highly Sensitive Atomic Magnetometer

A highly sensitive all-optical atomic magnetometer based on the magnetooptical effect which uses the advanced technique of single laser beam detection is reported and demonstrated experimentally. A sensitivity of 0.5 pT/Hz1/2 is obtained by analyzing the magnetic noise spectrum, which exceeds that of most traditional magnetometers. This kind of atomic magnetometer is very compact, has a low power consumption, and has a high theoretical sensitivity limit, which make it suitable for many applications.

Production and detection of atomic hexadecapole at Earth’s magnetic field

Optical magnetometers measure magnetic fields with extremely high precision and without cryogenics. However, at geomagnetic fields, important for applications from landmine removal to archaeology, they suffer from nonlinear Zeeman splitting, leading to systematic dependence on sensor orientation. We present experimental results on a method of eliminating this systematic error, using the hexadecapole atomic polarization moment. In particular, we demonstrate selective production of the atomic hexadecapole moment at Earth's magnetic field and verify its immunity to nonlinear Zeeman splitting. This technique promises to eliminate directional errors in all-optical atomic magnetometers, potentially improving their measurement accuracy by several orders of magnitude.