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Wave Electronics and its Application in Information and Telecommunication Systems (WECONF)

Use of Optically Pumped Quantum Magnetometers as Signal Receivers in the Ultra-Long Wavelength Range

Ермак Сергей Викторович, Alexander Fedotovich Kryachko, V. V. Semenov, О. В. Шакин, Olga Ermak

Published May 29, 2023• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The operation of basic types of quantum magnetometers with optical pumping as signal receivers in the ultra-long wavelength range is demonstrated in this work. The circuit realization of an experimental setup, provides the registration of double radio-optical resonance signals, is discussed. The realized magnetometers sensitivity is tens of pT/Hz1/2at bandwidth up to 1 kHz. The comparison of the absorption resonance signals in operation modes of quantum magnetometers with and without of synchronous detection is done. Maximum frequency of magnetic signals is about 534 Hz. An estimate of the maximum receiving distance is about of 100 m. The spectrum of frequency-modulated magnetometer signal is discussed. Prospects and features for the use of quantum magnetometers as super-low-frequency signal receivers are presented.

DOI
10.1109/weconf57201.2023.10147950

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The operation of basic types of quantum magnetometers with optical pumping as signal receivers in the ultra-long wavelength range is demonstrated in this work. The circuit realization of an experimental setup, provides the registration of double radio-optical resonance signals, is discussed. The realized magnetometers sensitivity is tens of pT/Hz1/2at bandwidth up to 1 kHz. The comparison of the absorption resonance signals in operation modes of quantum magnetometers with and without of synchronous detection is done. Maximum frequency of magnetic signals is about 534 Hz. An estimate of the maximum receiving distance is about of 100 m. The spectrum of frequency-modulated magnetometer signal is discussed. Prospects and features for the use of quantum magnetometers as super-low-frequency signal receivers are presented.
Signal attenuation limits the operating range in wireless communications and location. To solve the reduced range problem, we can use low-frequency signals in combination with magnetic sensing. We propose the use of an optically pumped magnetometer as a sensor and realize a proof-of-principle detection of binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulated signals. We demonstrate a ranging enhancement by exploiting both the magnetometer’s intrinsic sensitivity of below 1 pT/Hz1/2 and its 1 kHz operating bandwidth through the use of BPSK signals.
Radio communication through attenuating media necessitates the use of very-low frequency (VLF) and ultra-low frequency (ULF) carrier bands, which are frequently used in underwater and under-ground communication applications. Quantum sensing techniques can be used to circumvent hard constraints on the size, weight and noise floor of classical signal transducers. In this low-frequency range, an optically pumped atomic sample can be used to detect carrier wave modulation resonant with ground-state Zeeman splitting of alkali atoms. Using a compact, self-calibrating system we demonstrate a resonant atomic transducer for digital data encoded using binary phase- and frequency-keying of resonant carrier waves in the 200 Hz -200 kHz range. We present field trial data showing sensor noise floor, decoded data and received bit error rate, and calculate the projected range of sub-sea communication using this device.
We introduce a new ultra-sensitive adiabatic magnetometer that has a broad bandwidth and can operate in the presence of magnetic fields and gradients. It follows conceptually typical implementations of atomic magnetometers based on alkali-metal vapor cells and lasers for optical pumping and optical Faraday effect detection, while its unique feature is a measurement of an oscillating magnetic field along the probe beam direction at frequencies lower than the resonant frequency, proportional to a static magnetic field along the pump beam direction. The bandwidth of the adiabatic magnetometer scales as the strength of the field along the pump beam. From our theoretical studies it is expected that the adiabatic magnetometer can reach 1 fT sensitivity with a bandwidth of 10 kHz, which any type of atomic magnetometers cannot achieve. Among anticipated various applications of this adiabatic magnetometer are biomagnetic sensing, nuclear magnetic resonance detection, and alkali-metal density measurements. We experimentally conducted alkali-metal density measurements, as an example of applications.
Optically pumped radio frequency (RF) atomic magnetometers have been shown to have an improved sensitivity over standard tuned coils for frequencies less than 50 MHz, making these RF magnetometers attractive for the detection of nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) and low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals. In an atomic magnetometer a linearly polarized probe beam measures, through Faraday rotation, the transverse atomic magnetization induced by the resonant RF signal. The resonance, or Larmor, frequency of the magnetometer is easily tuned with a small magnetic field. We construct an atomic magnetometer based on a potassium vapor cell with a measured sensitivity of 0.22 ± 0.02 fT/ √ Hz and a detection bandwidth of 334 ± 11 Hz when tuned to 423 kHz, giving a Q of over 1200. While high Q magnetometers are sensitive to weak magnetic fields, they are also sensitive to magnetic transients, such as those associated with the excitation pulses needed for magnetic resonance. The ringing created by such transients can obscure the signal of interest. This is particularly detrimental for magnetic resonance signals that decay faster than the transverse relaxation rate. We demonstrate that by feeding back part of the optical signal to orthogonal electromagnetic coils, this unwanted ringing can be quickly damped out leaving the magnetometer ready for the detection of the signal. This negative feedback as applied to the K spins is called spin-damping and can be used to relax the K atoms faster by more than two orders of magnitude. Using spin-damping we reduce the dead-time before data acquisition from 0.8 to 0.2 ms in the detection of NQR signals from ammonium nitrate, one of the so-called fertilizer bomb explosives with an NQR frequency of 423 kHz. Furthermore, we discover that spin-damping can not only be used to suppress signals, it can also be used to suppress noise. We show that it can be used to suppress both environmental noise and more fundamental quantum noise, such as photon shot and spin projection noise. The latter suppression opens the door for its use in quantum control to initialize spin systems before measurements. For phase-sensitive detection, as is often used in magnetic resonance, spin-damping suppresses signal and noise in such a way as to increase the sensitivity bandwidth of the magnetometer. We prove, both theoretically and experimentally, that it is possible to increase the magnetometer detection bandwidth by a factor of 3 or more without significant loss in sensitivity. Such gains in bandwidth for a high Q magnetometer translate into savings in detection time, particularly for substance detection where the frequency of the signal of interest may not be completely known.
The results of studies of the long-term frequency stability as a function of the correlation coefficient for a tandem of two quantum magnetometers with laser pumping of 87 Rb in wall-coated vapour cell are represented. Measurement scheme includes a low-frequency self-generating magnetometer and a quantum microwave discriminator working at magnetic dipole transitions of radio-optical end state resonance. The difference of synchronously detected signals is processed to determine the Allan variance as a function of averaging time and correlation coefficient of signals. These parameters are essentially dependent both on the pumping light intensity and polarization and the intensity of radio fields that are produced in the working cell.
We present an experimental study of the intrinsic magnetometric sensitivity of an optical or rf-frequency double-resonance magnetometer in which linearly polarized laser light is used in the optical pumping and detection processes. We show that a semiempirical model of the magnetometer can be used to describe the magnetic resonance spectra. Then, we present an efficient method to predict the optimum operating point of the magnetometer, i.e., the light power and rf Rabi frequency providing maximum magnetometric sensitivity. Finally, we apply the method to investigate the evolution of the optimum operating point with temperature. The method is very efficient to determine relaxation rates and thus allowed us to determine the three collisional disalignment cross sections for the components of the alignment tensor. Both first and second harmonic signals from the magnetometer are considered and compared.