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Physical Review A

Quantum sensitivity limits of an optical magnetometer based on atomic phase coherence

Michael Fleischhauer, Marlan O. Scully

Published Mar 1, 1994• 142 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An optical magnetometer based on atomic coherence effects is analyzed using a quantum Langevin approach. The large dispersion of a phase-coherent atomic medium (``phaseonium'') at a point of vanishing absorption is used to detect magnetic level shifts via optical phase measurements in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with sensitivities potentially superior to state-of-the-art devices. Effects of Doppler broadening and fluctuations of the driving field are discussed and a comparison to standard optical-pumping magnetometers is made.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.49.1973

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An optical magnetometer based on atomic coherence effects is analyzed using a quantum Langevin approach. The large dispersion of a phase-coherent atomic medium (``phaseonium'') at a point of vanishing absorption is used to detect magnetic level shifts via optical phase measurements in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with sensitivities potentially superior to state-of-the-art devices. Effects of Doppler broadening and fluctuations of the driving field are discussed and a comparison to standard optical-pumping magnetometers is made.
The large dispersion of a phase-coherent medium, at a point of vanishing absorption, is applied to interferometric measurements of detuning between atomic and radiation frequencies. It is shown that, under certain conditions, the interferometer quantum-limited operation is determined by vacuum-fluctuation shot noise while the noise introduced by the interaction of the probe field with the phase-coherent atoms can be made negligible. As a possible application, an optical magnetometer is analyzed whose sensitivity is shown to be potentially superior to the present state-of-the-art devices.
We analyze systematic (classical) and fundamental (quantum) limitations of the sensitivity of optical magnetometers resulting from ac Stark shifts. We show that in contrast to absorption-based techniques, the signal reduction associated with classical broadening can be compensated in magnetometers based on phase measurements using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). However due to ac Stark--associated quantum noise the signal-to-noise ratio of EIT-based magnetometers attains a maximum value at a certain laser intensity. This value is independent on the quantum statistics of the light and defines a standard quantum limit of sensitivity. We demonstrate that an EIT-based optical magnetometer in Faraday configuration is the best candidate to achieve the highest sensitivity of magnetic-field detection and give a detailed analysis of such a device.
An optical magnetometer based on electromagnetically induced transparency is analyzed. Utilizing the different orientation characteristics for different field polarizations, the magnitude and orientation of an applied magnetic field can be measured. As a model system we consider the sodium D1{D}_{1}D1​ transition taking into account hyperfine structure and optical pumping effects.