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Optics Express

Two-stage digital differential atomic spin precession detection method

Dongying Chen, Yuanhong Yang, Wei Jin, Xuefeng Wang, Yuanxing Liu, Tianshun Wang

Published Nov 8, 2021• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a two-stage digital differential method for atomic spin precession detection. The first differential operation is carried out with a polarimeter module and subsequent digital differential. The second differential operation is achieved by orthogonally modulating the polarization direction of a linearly polarized probe light with a LiNbO 3 electro-optic modulation module and by digitally demodulating the difference in the outputs corresponding to the positive and negative half periods of the modulation square-waves. This method is insensitive to the error of modulator and double sensitivity coefficient was obtained. The built detection system with the digital circuit was applied to a spin-exchange relaxation-free magnetometer, and the sensitivity coefficient, sensitivity, and bias instability were tested and compared with two other typical detection methods. The highest sensitivity and minimum bias instability and noise were achieved with the proposed method.

DOI
10.1364/oe.443968

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We propose and experimentally demonstrate a two-stage digital differential method for atomic spin precession detection. The first differential operation is carried out with a polarimeter module and subsequent digital differential. The second differential operation is achieved by orthogonally modulating the polarization direction of a linearly polarized probe light with a LiNbO 3 electro-optic modulation module and by digitally demodulating the difference in the outputs corresponding to the positive and negative half periods of the modulation square-waves. This method is insensitive to the error of modulator and double sensitivity coefficient was obtained. The built detection system with the digital circuit was applied to a spin-exchange relaxation-free magnetometer, and the sensitivity coefficient, sensitivity, and bias instability were tested and compared with two other typical detection methods. The highest sensitivity and minimum bias instability and noise were achieved with the proposed method.
A new method for the detection of atomic spin precession based on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Different from the conventional polarization detection methods which obtain the atomic spin precession signal by measuring the change of the probe laser power, the proposed method uses the laser modulated by an electro-optic phase modulator (EOM) as the source of the interferometer, and obtains the atomic spin precession signal by measuring the phase difference between the two arms of the MZI. The output of interferometer is independent of the probe laser power, which avoids the system error caused by the fluctuation of the probe laser power, and the long-term stability of the system is effectively improved. At the same time, the method adopts high-frequency electro-optic modulation, which can effectively suppress low-frequency noise, such as 1/f noise, and can significantly improve the detection sensitivity. The rotation sensitivity and long-term stability of the atomic comagnetometer were tested using the MZI detection method and a typical detection method, respectively. The comparison results show that the proposed method has the highest low frequency sensitivity and the potential to improve the long-term stability of the system.
Abstract We present an ultrahigh-sensitivity electro-optic modulator (EOM) detection method for detecting the atomic Larmor precession in an all-optical K–Rb hybrid atomic magnetometer operating in the spin-exchange relaxation-free regime. A magnetic field sensitivity of ~10 f T Hz −1/2 has been achieved by optimizing the probe laser parameters and the EOM modulation conditions, which is comparable to that with the Faraday modulation method and has a better performance than the balanced polarimetry method in the low frequency range. The EOM detection method in the atomic magnetometer presents several advantages, such as simple structure, no extra magnetic noise, moderate thermal effect, high measurement sensitivity and reliable stability. It is demonstrated to be feasible for the improved compactness and simplicity of atomic magnetic field measurement devices in the future.
We propose a high-sensitivity spin polarization detection scheme based on optical amplitude modulation in atomic co-magnetometers, which is different from the traditional configuration.A linearly polarized laser with intensity modulation interacts with electron spins, generating optical rotation angles.Through differential amplification and demodulation, atomic spin polarization information is extracted with high precision.The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by applying external perturbations during testing.Compared to traditional detection methods, the proposed approach effectively enhances inertial measurement sensitivity.Specifically, at 1 Hz, the measurement sensitivity has improved from 9.7 × 10 -6 to 3.25 × 10 -6 deg/(s Hz 1/2 ).Furthermore, the proposed scheme is easily integrable and conducive to future research on miniaturizing co-magnetometers and can also be applied to many other related fields.
An electro-optic modulator (EOM) detection method is demonstrated to detect the optical atomic precession in the Spin-Exchange Relaxation Free (SERF) atomic magnetometer, which achieved a sensitivity of ~30 fT/Hz1/2 at the calibration frequency of 30Hz. The SERF atomic magnetometer based on EOM presents several advantages, such as simple structure, no magnetic shielding, moderate thermal effect and high measurement accuracy. It is demonstrated to be feasible for the compactness and simplicity of atomic magnetic field measurement devices in the future.
Optical rotation of linearly polarized light is used to measure atom spin precession in an atomic spin gyroscope (ASG). However, the common-mode noise in the polarization measurement seriously affects the performance of the sensitive ASG. Here we propose an optical differential detection method based on the photoelastic polarization modulation, which could effectively eliminate the light power fluctuation of the laser source and optical elements, while removing the polarization noise and the residual birefringence. The feasibility and efficiency of this method have been verified experimentally. The rotation sensitivity of the ASG is an order of magnitude better, and the long-time stability is significantly improved. In addition, this method is easier to implement because noise sources do not need to be strictly distinguished.
Combined with the modulation transfer method, we successfully observe a frequency discriminating signal with improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the scheme of differential detection of Doppler-free spectroscopy. In our previous counter-propagated pump-probe scheme, two orthogonal polarization components of the probe beam constrictive and destructive interact with dark state prepared by the pump beam, respectively. This led to simultaneous enhanced absorption and transmission by detecting the parallel and perpendicular polarization components of the transmitted probe beam. In this presentation, we add modulation to the pump beam, error signals are obtained by synchronous demodulating the probe beam transmission with the help of the four-wave mixing process in the light-atom interaction system. Our method not only boost the SNR of the error signal of differential detection signal compared to the traditional one, but also mitigate atomic resonance broadening and shift induced by direct modulation of the probe beam thanks to the modulation transfer spectroscopy. This new method may find applications in high-performance optical reference, high-resolution spectroscopy and so on.