Cell Reports Physical Science

Dynamic manipulation of atom spins via AC Stark effect in ultra-sensitive quantum magnetic sensing

Chenyi Zhou, Y. H. Yan, Ying Zhou, Yuesong Wu, Xiaoshu Ding, Kaixuan Zhang, Zhuo Wang, Jixi Lu

Published Mar 26, 2026• 0 citations

Abstract

Although the AC Stark effect has long been viewed as a detrimental perturbation in atomic spin-based quantum sensing, recent work shows that all-optical dynamic spin manipulation based on this effect eliminates the need for auxiliary magnetic fields and extracts more comprehensive information. Nevertheless, the AC Stark effect and optical pumping are intrinsically coupled due to their dependence on shared optical parameters, inducing unintended dynamic pumping that disturbs the desired spin manipulation. This work presents a symmetric dual-sideband detuning-modulated optical excitation scheme, which decouples the two mechanisms and enables independent dynamic optical spin manipulation with stable pumping. The suppression of dynamic pumping-induced perturbations achieved by our method enables all-optical control while allowing simultaneous multi-axis measurement of magnetic fields. This achieves a two-order-of-magnitude suppression of inter-axis crosstalk in the SERF regime. This work provides a new method for broadening quantum sensing using the AC Stark effect in optical pumping atomic devices.

DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2026.103209

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