Suppression of heading errors in Bell-Bloom optically pumped free-induction-decay alkali-metal atomic magnetometers

TL;DR

This paper presents methods to suppress heading errors in Bell-Bloom optically pumped alkali-metal atomic magnetometers, focusing on nonlinear Zeeman effects, achieving errors below 1 nT through innovative schemes.

Contribution

The study introduces novel schemes to reduce nonlinear Zeeman-induced heading errors in atomic magnetometers, enhancing measurement accuracy in geomagnetic fields.

Findings

Heading errors suppressed below 1 nT.

Effective averaging of atomic polarization in space and time.

Use of dual-atom comagnetometer to mitigate errors.

Abstract

Heading errors of atomic magnetometers refer to the dependence of measurement results on the sensor orientation with respect to the external magnetic field. There are three main sources of such errors: the light shift effect, the linear nuclear-spin Zeeman effect, and the nonlinear Zeeman effect. In this work, we suppress the former two effects by using the Bell-Bloom optical pumping method and probe the atomic signals while the pumping beam is off, and focus on the heading error induced by nonlinear Zeeman effect while the sensor operates in the geomagnetic field range. We demonstrate several schemes to suppress this remaining heading error within 1 nT using a single magnetometer or a comagnetometer. In the magnetometer system, two schemes are developed to average out the horizontal atomic polarization in space or in time, respectively. In the comagnetometer system, we combine the simultaneously measured Larmor frequencies of two different kinds of alkali atoms to either suppress the heading error or extract the orientation of the pumping beam relative to the bias field.