Sensitivity of a vector atomic magnetometer based on electromagnetically induced transparency

Published

June 26, 2024

Author(s)

Ying-Ju Wang, John Kitching, Mario Alberto Gonzalez Maldonado, Yang Li

Abstract

We present a realization of a magnetic sensor based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) resonances observed in hot Rb vapor using lin∥lin polarized dichromatic light and evaluate scalar and vector capabilities of the sensor for measuring Earth-like magnetic fields. We demonstrate scalar measurement sensitivity of 2pT/√Hz in the 1-100 Hz spectral frequency band using a 1 cm^3 Rb vapor cell, significantly improving the performance for such a configuration if compared with earlier measurements of large magnetic fields. By using a single linearly polarized dichromatic optical field, we are also able to determine the direction of the magnetic field with respect to the light propagation direction and the polarization, taking advantage of the symmetries of the interaction scheme. We accomplish that by combining the polarization-sensitive transmission measurements and sparse sensing machine learning techniques. A path for further improvement of the sensitivity and elimination of systematic effects, such as heading error, is discussed.

Citation

Optics Express

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.529276

Local Download

Citation

Wang, Y. , Kitching, J. , Gonzalez Maldonado, M. and Li, Y. (2024), Sensitivity of a vector atomic magnetometer based on electromagnetically induced transparency, Optics Express, [online], https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.529276, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957800 (Accessed October 14, 2025)