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arXiv:2304.14040

Orchestrating optical pumping with magnetic field for enhanced magnetometry

Swarupananda Pradhan, Sudip Mandal

Published Apr 27, 2023• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The atomic population trapped in uncoupled atomic states is a limiting factor for processes based on laser-atom interaction. The use of repump laser, bi-chromatic field, and vector magnetic field are explored in degenerate as well as non-degenerate atomic system to overcome the limitation. The magnetic resonance of 85Rb atoms under these complementary conditions are investigated in a buffer gas filled cell. The most suitable condition is achieved by the combined action of a bi-chromatic light with a specific combination of magnetic fields for non-degenerate levels where the relevant magnetic resonance shows more than 7-fold increase in its amplitude. The phenomenon is consistently observed through RF as well as magnetic field de-modulation technique. It will lead to similar improvement in the sensitivity of the atomic magnetometers. The optical pumping of the atomic population to the stretch state by manipulation of magnetic field will be of general interest involving quantum technology.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2304.14040

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The atomic population trapped in uncoupled atomic states is a limiting factor for processes based on laser-atom interaction. The use of repump laser, bi-chromatic field, and vector magnetic field are explored in degenerate as well as non-degenerate atomic system to overcome the limitation. The magnetic resonance of 85Rb atoms under these complementary conditions are investigated in a buffer gas filled cell. The most suitable condition is achieved by the combined action of a bi-chromatic light with a specific combination of magnetic fields for non-degenerate levels where the relevant magnetic resonance shows more than 7-fold increase in its amplitude. The phenomenon is consistently observed through RF as well as magnetic field de-modulation technique. It will lead to similar improvement in the sensitivity of the atomic magnetometers. The optical pumping of the atomic population to the stretch state by manipulation of magnetic field will be of general interest involving quantum technology.
Abstract The atomic population trapped in irrelevant atomic states is a limiting factor for sensors based on laser-atom interaction. Using a bi-chromatic light field along with a specific combination of magnetic fields, we show a significant increase in the amplitude ( i.e. , more than seven times) of a two-photon coherent population trapping (CPT) resonance, which can be effectively used for atomic magnetometry. This increase in amplitude can be explained through enhanced optical pumping via the transfer of population to the relevant Zeeman states. Our experimental observations are consistent with the theoretical calculations carried out for a realistic three-level atomic system using density matrix formalism. We further discuss the optimum condition for enhanced optical pumping by adjusting the ground-state decoherence rate. Enhanced optical pumping through the manipulation of the magnetic field is quite important and is of great interest in the field of quantum technology.
We demonstrate experimentally an atomic magnetometer based on optical pumping theory, a magnetic resonance that is induced by a radio frequency field and dependent on the magnetic field strength. Compared with the conventional method using one radiation field, which is used not only as the probe beam but also as a pump beam, the additional re-pump beam can increase remarkably the amplitude of the signal. It is shown that the amplitude of the magnetic field resonance signal can increase more than 55% by using an additional re-pump beam, which makes the sensitivity of the magnetometer higher. Finally, we investigate the relation between amplitude of the signal and re-pump laser power, and calculate the atomic population in the trapping states with rate equations.
Atomic vapour magnetometers sense the local magnetic field strength by measuring the resulting precession rate of a well-defined quantum state. An essential prerequisite for this approach is a requirement to drive the media into this quantum state, which is frequently achieved via optical pumping. In real-world alkali-metal atoms, with their multiplicity of ground states, the optical pumping process is necessarily lossy, with a large fraction of the atoms being lost to quantum states that do not contribute to the useful magnetically sensitive signal. This consequently reduces the sensitivity of all optically-pumped atomic sensors. Here we theoretically and experimentally study the population changes of the quantum ground states of 87 Rb during optical pumping. We use this understanding to develop a repumping scheme that allows us to increase the number of atoms that are contributing to the useful magnetic sensing output. Unlike prior schemes, our approach delivers this improved sensitivity with significantly suppressed fictitious magnetic fields associated with the repumping, which would otherwise reduce the accuracy of the sensor. When operated at Earth’s field strength (∼50 µ T), the repumped sensor shows a magnetic sensitivity of 200 fT/ Hz , that is nearly three times higher than the non-repumped version.
An experimental method for obtaining quantum interference signal in atomic ensemble using a bi-chromatic field is discussed. Here, the quantum interference signal is obtained by scanning the magnetic field rather than conventional method of changing the frequency separation between the light fields. We could simultaneously observe resonances due to population redistribution and quantum superposition between non-degenerate states, which otherwise involves fundamentally different approaches. The method is implemented to Rubidium atoms in buffer gas filled as well as anti-relaxation coated atomic cells. Apart from phenomenological interest, the modified experimental procedure is found to be convenient for in-situ calibration of three axis magnetic coils. The investigation will be useful for high as well as low vector magnetic field sensing.
Abstract Precise control and knowledge over atomic dynamics is central to the advancement of quantum technology. The different experimental conditions namely, atoms in a vacuum, antirelaxation coated and buffer gas filled atomic cells provide complementary platforms for such investigations. The extent of changes in optical pumping, velocity changing collision and hyperfine changing collision rates associated with these conditions are discussed. There is a phenomenal change in the optical density by a factor of >25 times in the presence of a control field in a buffer gas environment. We found confinement induced enhanced optical pumping as the mechanism behind the observed transparency in buffer gas cell. The diffusive velocity of atoms were measured to be ∼25 ± 12 m s−1 and ⩽8 ± 4 m s−1 for antirelaxation coated and buffer gas filled cells respectively. The measurements were carried out for 85Rb atoms in natural isotopic composition using pump–probe spectroscopy. The studies will have useful application in measurements of relaxation rates, quantum memory, quantum repeaters and atomic devices.
We have proposed a new technique to obtain highly polarized atoms for improving the sensitivity of the all-optical Cs atomic magnetometer. In a Bell–Bloom magnetometer, the resonance pumping from the ground state F g = 3 to the excited state F e = 4 at the D1 line is used to polarize the Cs atoms and populate the sublevels of the | F g = 4 , m F = 4 ⟩ partly as the transition F g = 4 → F e = 3 remains leaking. Here we utilize a modulation technique to generate a sideband frequency to pump both transitions simultaneously, which drives more atoms to the target state | F g = 4 , m F = 4 ⟩ . This improvement significantly increases the magnetic resonance signal but with little effect on its linewidth. It is very suitable for the miniaturization of the atomic magnetometer in the future.