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IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Sensitivity Comparison of Mx and Frequency-Modulated Bell–Bloom Cs Magnetometers in a Microfabricated Cell

Ricardo Jiménez-Martínez, W. C. Griffith, Ying-Ju Wang, Svenja A. Knappe, John E. Kitching, K. Smith, Mark D. Prouty

Published Sep 18, 2009• 83 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We compare the sensitivity performance of two optically pumped atomic magnetometers based on the Mx and frequency-modulated bell-bloom configurations. The Cs magnetometers are implemented using a millimeter-scale microfabricated vapor cell. It is found that the Bell-Bloom magnetometer yields sensitivities similar to those of the Mx magnetometer when operated under equally optimized conditions. The Bell-Bloom approach offers several attractive features over the Mx approach for chip-scale magnetometer instrumentation.

DOI
10.1109/tim.2009.2023829

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We compare the sensitivity performance of two optically pumped atomic magnetometers based on the Mx and frequency-modulated bell-bloom configurations. The Cs magnetometers are implemented using a millimeter-scale microfabricated vapor cell. It is found that the Bell-Bloom magnetometer yields sensitivities similar to those of the Mx magnetometer when operated under equally optimized conditions. The Bell-Bloom approach offers several attractive features over the Mx approach for chip-scale magnetometer instrumentation.
The fabrication and performance of a miniature optically pumped atomic magnetometer constructed with microfabricated components are discussed. This device measures the spin precession frequency of Rb87 atoms to determine the magnetic field by use of the Mx technique. It has a demonstrated sensitivity to magnetic fields of 5pT∕Hz1∕2 for a bandwidth from 1to100Hz, nearly an order of magnitude improvement over our previous chip-scale magnetometer. The 3dB bandwidth has also been increased to 1kHz by reconfiguring the miniature vapor cell heater.
In order to availably solve the crosstalk of the traditionally optically pumped magnetometer,in which an oscillating magnetic field drives transitions between Zeeman magnetic sublevels,an all-optical cesium(Cs)atomic magnetometer based on Bell-Bloom structure has been investigated and demonstrated experimentally in this paper.When there is an external magnetic field,by analyzing the Larmor precession spectrum of the polarized ground state atoms induced by a modulated pump laser,the atomic magnetometer with high sensitivity is achieved.First,we present the operating principle of the magnetometer with amplitude modulation and set up the experimental system by means of a three-layer magnetic shield.Then in the case of 100 nT field by optimizing the experimental parameters,i.e.,the frequency and intensity of the pump laser,we have obtained the atomic precession spectrum with line width(full width at half maximum)of 22 Hz and signal noise ratio(SNR)of 3.2×104 per unit hertz band width,and then have evaluated the magnetometer with an intrinsic sensitivity of 100fT/Hz1/2 and spatial resolution smaller than 1.2cm,while the experimentally closed loop test shows that the cesium atomic magnetometer would have the sensitivity of 120fT/Hz1/2 and response time of 300 ms.
The designs of microfabricated alkali vapor cells play an important role when the atomic magnetometers are developing toward on-chip integration. This paper presents microfabricated spherical alkali vapor cells with improved sensitivity for chip-scale atomic magnetometers. A microfabricated spherical rubidium vapor cell and a traditional microfabricated planar rubidium vapor cell are designed for comparison, which are of the same volume and interconnected by a microchannel to acquire equal inner buffer gas pressure. In chip-scale spin-exchange relaxation-free (SERF) atomic magnetometers, the rubidium polarization lifetimes of three pairs of spherical and planar vapor cells at different buffer gas pressures of 0.35, 0.73, and 2.00 amg are measured, respectively. The sensitivity of SERF atomic magnetometers using the vapor cells at a 0.35-amg buffer gas pressure is also measured. The results show that the transverse polarization lifetime of the spherical vapor cell is 2.46, 1.44, and 1.05 times that of the planar one at 0.35-, 0.73-, and 2.00-amg buffer gas pressures, respectively. Combining the improved polarization lifetime and increased optical path length, chip-scale SERF atomic magnetometer using the microspherical vapor cell has the sensitivity of 60 fT/Hz1/2from 5 to 15 Hz, while that based on the planar one is demonstrated with the sensitivity of 400 fT/Hz1/2from 5 to 15 Hz.
Spin polarized atomic magnetometers involve the preparation of atomic spins and their detection for monitoring magnetic fields. Due to the fact that magnetic fields are ubiquitous in our world, spin polarized atomic magnetometers are used in a wide range of applications from the detection of magnetic fields generated by the human heart and brain to the detection of nuclear magnetic resonance. In this thesis we developed microfabricated spin polarized atomic magnetometers. These sensors are based on optical pumping and spin-exchange collisions between alkali atoms and noble gases contained in microfabricated millimeter-scale vapor cells. In the first part of the thesis, we improved different features of current microfabricated optical magnetometers. Specifically, we improved the bandwidth of these devices, without degrading their magnetic field sensitivity, by broadening their magnetic resonance through spin-exchange collisions between alkali atoms. We also implemented all-optical excitation techniques to avoid problems, such as the magnetic perturbation of the environment, induced by the radio-frequency fields used in some of these sensors. In the second part of the thesis we demonstrated a microfluidic chip for the optical production and detection of hyperpolarized Xe gas through spin-exchange collisions with optically pumped Rb atoms. These devices are critical for the widespread use of spin polarized atomic magnetometers in applications requiring simple, compact, low-cost, and portable instrumentation.