Diffusive Suppression of AC-Stark Shifts in Atomic Magnetometers

TL;DR

This paper proposes a diffusion-based method to suppress AC-Stark shifts in atomic magnetometers, enhancing their accuracy by limiting the impact of light-induced magnetic field variations.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel scheme using optical pumping and atomic diffusion to reduce AC-Stark shift effects in magnetometers, improving measurement stability.

Findings

Reduced sensitivity to AC-Stark shifts demonstrated

Enhanced magnetometer response stability achieved

Potential for improved magnetic field measurements

Abstract

In atomic magnetometers, the vector AC-Stark shift associated with circularly polarized light generates spatially varying effective magnetic fields which limit the magnetometer response and serve as sources of noise. We describe a scheme whereby optically pumping a small sub-volume of the magnetometer cell and relying on diffusion to transport polarized atoms allows a magnetometer to be operated with minimal sensitivity to the AC-Stark field.