Theory of atomic vector magnetometer using linearly polarized resonant light

Abstract

As is well known a linearly polarized resonant laser will cause atoms to generate a magnetic tensor moment (MTM) by polarizing them. When there exists an external magnetic field, it is possible that the moment will precess around the field. In the presence of a radio frequency (RF) exciting source, we investigate theoretically the dependence of time-independent (direct current, DC), the first and second harmonic signal of the MTM precession on magnetic vector field, and obtain its analytical solution by solving the Liouville equation. The results show that the interference of both harmonic components will result in the precession spectrum evidently varying. A detailed explanation is described in the following. For the DC signal, Rabi frequency Ω of 1/(2√2) is a spectral splitting threshold. When it is greater than the threshold, the interference will cause single resonant absorption dip characterized usually to split into two dips, which has not been reported before to the best of our knowledge, and the separation between both the dips may be expressed as √3√Ω2+Ω4 -Ω2-1. For the first harmonic signal including symmetric and antisymmetric component, an interference fringe will appear near the center of antisymmetric part when Ω >1/(2√2), simultaneously its symmetric part behaves like the above dc component, such as splitting threshold and separation between both dips. With regard to the second harmonic signal, it is found that the interference can also lead to the width of the second harmonic decreasing to 38% compared with the case of the first harmonic signal. At the optimum RF Rabi frequency, on the assumption that noise spectral density is constant, it is theoretically shown that the most sensitive magnetometer, realized by the DC component or the first or second harmonic signal of the precession, depends only on the angle between the light polarization and the measured magnetic field.In fact, we are able to obtain the modules of the measured magnetic vector by RF resonant frequency. The angle between the magnetic field and the laser polarization is determined just by the ratio of the intensity of the DC component to the intensity of the second harmonic signal and the ratio between the intensities of the symmetric parts of two harmonic signals in resonance, and another orientation angle between the measured field projection at the plane perpendicular to the light polarization and the direction of RF source depends on the phase difference between the antisymmetric components of both harmonic signals. Consequently, we demonstrate a vectorial atomic magnetometer that is realized by using the RF source and the linearly polarized resonant laser without rotating laser polarization. This kind of atomic magnetometer with simple sensor structure is easy to integrate vector magnetometer array which will be suitable for solving the inverse problem and geomagnetic navigation.