Dynamic range and linearity improvement for zero-field single-beam atomic magnetometer

Abstract

Zero-field single-beam atomic magnetometers with transverse parametric modulation for ultra-weak magnetic field detection have attracted widespread attention recently. In this study, we present a comprehensive response model and propose a modification method of conventional first harmonic response by introducing the second harmonic correction. The proposed modification method gives improvement in dynamic range and reduction of linearity error. Additionally, our modification method shows suppression of response instability caused by optical intensity and frequency fluctuations. An atomic magnetometer with single-beam configuration is built to compare the performance between our proposed method and the conventional method. The results indicate that our method’s magnetic field response signal achieves a 5-fold expansion of dynamic range from 2 nT to 10 nT, with the linearity error decreased from 5% to 1%. Under the fluctuations of 5% for optical intensity and ±15 GHz detuning of frequency, the proposed modification method maintains intensity-related instability less than 1% and frequency-related instability less than 8% while the conventional method suffers 15% and 38%, respectively. Our method is promising for future high-sensitive and long-term stable optically pumped atomic sensors.