Colliding-probe bi-atomic magnetometers via energy circulation: Breaking symmetry-enforced magneto-optical rotation blockade

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel colliding-probe bi-atomic magnetometer that overcomes a fundamental blockade in nonlinear magneto-optical rotation, significantly enhancing magnetic field detection sensitivity and potential applications in photon switching.

Contribution

The paper presents a new theoretical and experimental approach to lift the NMORE blockade using energy circulation in colliding probes, achieving over two orders of magnitude signal increase.

Findings

Over two orders of magnitude increase in NMORE signal.

Greater than 6dB improvement in magnetic field sensitivity.

Successful experimental validation of the theoretical model.

Abstract

We have developed an inelastic wave scattering based colliding-probe bi-atomic magnetometer theory. We show a propagation growth blockade in single probe based magnetic field sensing schemes, revealing the root cause of strong suppression of nonlinear magneto-optical rotation effect (NMORE) in single probe based atomic magnetometers. We further show, both experimentally and theoretically, a colliding probe bi-atomic magnetometer that lifts this NMORE blockade. The directional energy circulation in this new atomic magnetometry technique results in more than two orders of magnitude increase in NMORE signal as well as greater than 6dB increase of magnetic field detection sensitivity. The new technique may have broad applications in photon gates and switching operations.