A High-Sensitivity Tunable Two-Beam Fiber-Coupled High-Density Magnetometer with Laser Heating

Igor Savukov; Malcolm G Boshier

doi:10.3390/s16101691

A High-Sensitivity Tunable Two-Beam Fiber-Coupled High-Density Magnetometer with Laser Heating

Sensors (Basel). 2016 Oct 13;16(10):1691. doi: 10.3390/s16101691.

Authors

Igor Savukov¹, Malcolm G Boshier²

Affiliations

¹ Physics Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA. isavukov@lanl.gov.
² Physics Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA. boshier@lanl.gov.

Abstract

Atomic magnetometers (AM) are finding many applications in biomagnetism, national security, industry, and science. Fiber-coupled (FC) designs promise to make them compact and flexible for operation. Most FC designs are based on a single-beam configuration or electrical heating. Here, we demonstrate a two-beam FC AM with laser heating that has 5 fT/Hz^1/2 sensitivity at low frequency (50 Hz), which is higher than that of other fiber-coupled magnetometers and can be improved to the sub-femtotesla level. This magnetometer is widely tunable from DC to very high frequencies (as high as 100 MHz; the only issue might be the application of a suitable uniform and stable bias field) with a sensitivity under 10 fT/Hz^1/2 and can be used for magneto-encephalography (MEG), magneto-cardiography (MCG), underground communication, ultra-low MRI/NMR, NQR detection, and other applications.

Keywords: atomic magnetometers; high sensitivity; low-frequency.