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IEEE photonics journal

Modeling and Measuring of Light Shift in Optically Pumped Atomic Magnetometers

Yuntian Zou, Xiangyang Zhou, Jiali Liu, Qi Shao, Jinghong Xu, Wei Quan, Liwei Jiang

Published Mar 19, 2026• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The light shift is a significant error source of optically pumped atomic magnetometers (OPAMs), requiring accurate calculation or measurement to assess its impact on the accuracy of OPAMs. In this paper, a light shift theoretical model considering the gradient of the pump light is established, providing a detailed description of the light shift distribution within the cell under the influence of multiple parameters. Additionally, a light shift measurement method through magneto optical angle adjustment (MOAA) is proposed, enabling convenient measurement of the light shift. The correctness of the proposed model and the effectiveness of the MOAA method are validated through experiments. The proposed model and method contribute to improving the accuracy of OPAMs and enhancing their performance in practical applications.

DOI
10.1109/jphot.2026.3675599

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The light shift is a significant error source of optically pumped atomic magnetometers (OPAMs), requiring accurate calculation or measurement to assess its impact on the accuracy of OPAMs. In this paper, a light shift theoretical model considering the gradient of the pump light is established, providing a detailed description of the light shift distribution within the cell under the influence of multiple parameters. Additionally, a light shift measurement method through magneto optical angle adjustment (MOAA) is proposed, enabling convenient measurement of the light shift. The correctness of the proposed model and the effectiveness of the MOAA method are validated through experiments. The proposed model and method contribute to improving the accuracy of OPAMs and enhancing their performance in practical applications.
The light shift represents a major source of measurement error and system noise in optically pumped atomic magnetometers (OPAMs). Tuning the laser frequency to a specific value is a common and effective approach to suppressing light shift in many optical-pumping systems. However, when this method is applied to OPAMs, a significant issue arises: at the zero-light-shift frequency, the magnetometer’s sensitivity decreases markedly. Consequently, it is not possible to optimize simultaneously both the measurement accuracy affected by the light shift and the overall sensitivity of the magnetometer. To address this contradiction, the underlying mechanism was analyzed using the theory of light absorption and the principles governing light–atom interactions, leading to the proposal of a dual-frequency optical-pumping scheme. Experimental results demonstrate that this approach can suppress the light shift by more than 95% while maintaining the optimal sensitivity of the OPAM. The proposed dual-frequency scheme can also be extended to other circularly polarized optical-pumping systems, thereby facilitating both the enhancement of OPAM performance and its practical deployment in real-world applications.
Single-beam optically pumped atomic magnetometers (OPAMs) represent promising candidates for applications in geomagnetic field monitoring, biomedicine, and various other precision sensing domains owing to their exceptional sensitivity, high measurement accuracy, and cost-effectiveness. However, in orientation-based OPAMs utilizing circularly polarized light (CPL) pumping, the off-resonant light introduces light shift. The light shift acts as an additional magnetic field, reducing the measurement accuracy of OPAMs. Moreover, the dependence of the light shift on light intensity and frequency facilitates the conversion of light noise into magnetic noise, thereby degrading the sensitivity of OPAMs. In this study, we propose an optical pumping scheme based on space division multiplexing light (SDML) to suppress the light shift in OPAM. The approach employs two orthogonally polarized linearly polarized beams with a controlled phase difference to generate a spatially periodic distribution of left- and right-handed CPL. Optical pumping with the SDML induces oppositely directed light shifts in distinct spatial regions that effectively cancel each other. Finally, it is verified by experiments that the light shift is greatly suppressed based on SDML. Under detuned SDML pumping, both the light shift and light intensity noise are suppressed by over 50%, while maintaining a sensitivity comparable to that achieved with conventional CPL pumping. The proposed method demonstrates significant potential for magnetometers in light-noise-prone environments, and it can be generalized to other orientation-based magnetometers that rely on CPL pumping.
Atomics magnetometers achieve remarkable accuracy, applying to production and scientific research. However, their size and bulk components make it difficult to achieve higher accuracy. We investigate the influence of the skew angle of the pump beam on the optical pumping rate in an atomic magnetometer. An analysis based on the Bloch equation is proposed to decrease evaluate optical errors in the process of production and assembly. When the incident angle is non-zero, the pumping rate has a projection in the direction of a static magnetic field. By establishing the pumping rate equation, the pumping rate of each position in the vapor cell in the direction of static magnetic field at different pump light skew angles is calculated in our study. The sensitivity was measured experimentally to demonstrate the simulation results. The results indicate that the optical pumping rate decreases as the amplitude of skew angle and propagation distance increasing which can be evaluated by one-dimensional distribution while the decay rate increases with the rise of the angle. The simulation values of the rubidium pumping rate, obtained with an incident angle of 0.5° , in the center of the vapor cell are reduced by 46%. The sensitivity decreases with the increasing skew angle similar to the attenuation trend of the optical pumping rate but not the same. Our work provides a reference for evaluating the optical error of atomic magnetometer which is useful for miniaturization design.
Light shift arising from the circularly polarized pump beam in atomic magnetometers can induce an undesired magnetic response, and thus affect their accuracy. Here, the light shift and the corresponding cross-talk effect in the magnetometer have been investigated, and a scheme with an additional off-resonant pump beam with an appropriate polarization and intensity has been proposed to effectively reject the light shift. And the experimental results reproduce the expected behavior. This scheme provides a powerful tool to reject the light shift in optical pumping systems, in particular, the hybrid optically pumped systems.
The deterioration of spin coherence has been a significant challenge in the field of quantum magnetic measurements based on optically pumped atomic magnetometers (OPAMs). However, measurement and evaluation methods for specific relaxation components of OPAMs under working conditions remain lacking, which impedes further improvement in OPAM performance. To address this, we propose a methodology for quantifying the relaxation components of an OPAM under realistic operating conditions. Using this method, we confirm the existence of an anomalous relaxation mechanism induced by radio-frequency (RF) magnetic fields and develop an empirical expression to describe its behavior. The results experimentally demonstrate that, in addition to the well-known spin-exchange relaxation, the dominant contributions to spin relaxation arise from optical pumping and RF magnetic fields. This work paves the way for sensitivity enhancement in quantum magnetometry and refines the theoretical understanding of relaxation mechanisms in OPAMs.
The light shift is an important error source for atomic magnetometers. It would vanish if the frequency of the circularly polarized light is tuned to the optical resonance center. For high-density alkali-metal atomic magnetometers, the vapor cell has a large optical depth near the resonance, resulting in the difficulty in obtaining the exact resonance center by measuring the optical absorption line. In order to solve this problem, we propose a method to tune the pump light to a frequency where the shift is minimum based on the magnetic field zeroing technique. In addition, we also compare our results with the fitting center of the optical absorption line based on the measurement data far detuned from the resonance. The experimental results show that our method achieves a better suppression result of the light shift.