Dual axis atomic magnetometer and gyroscope enabled by nuclear spin perturbation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel dual-axis atomic magnetometer and gyroscope that uses nuclear spin perturbation to measure magnetic fields and rotations with high sensitivity and reduced cross-talk, enhancing precision in fundamental physics tests.

Contribution

The study presents a new co-magnetometry scheme employing magnetic pulses and pulsed optical pumping, enabling direct measurement of magnetic noise effects and achieving sensitivity comparable to existing self-compensating devices.

Findings

Numerical simulations show four signals can be retrieved with similar sensitivity to single-axis devices.

Proof-of-principle experiment demonstrates low magnetic-rotation cross-talk of 0.2 ± 0.1 μHz/pT.

Device performance is on par with the most sensitive self-compensating magnetometers.

Abstract

Alkali-noble-gas comagnetometers have become an essential tool for tests of fundamental physics and offer a compact platform for precision gyroscopy. They are, however, limited by technical noise at low frequencies, commonly due to their limited suppression of magnetic noise. Here we investigate a new method for co-magnetometry between a single noble gas and alkali species. While similar to well-known devices using self-compensation, our scheme introduces magnetic pulses that controllably perturb the noble gas and pulsed optical pumping to polarise the alkali atoms. These applied pulses allow our scheme to measure, rather than just suppress, the effect of magnetic noise thereby offering reduced cross-talk. We show numerically that our scheme retrieves four signals (rotations and magnetic fields on two transverse axes) with similar sensitivity to a single axis device. We also present a proof-of-principle experiment based on a 87Rb-129Xe cell. Our data shows a low magnetic-rotation cross-talk of $0.2 \pm 0.1\mu$Hz$/$pT, which is already on par with the most sensitive devices relying on self-compensation.