Miniature atomic scalar magnetometer for space based on the rubidium isotope 87Rb
نویسندگان
چکیده
A miniature atomic scalar magnetometer based on the rubidium isotope 87Rb was developed for operation in space. The instrument design implements both Mx and Mz mode operation and leverages a novel microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fabricated vapor cell and a custom silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit. The vapor cell has a volume of only 1 mm3 so that it can be efficiently heated to its operating temperature by a specially designed, low-magnetic-field-generating resistive heater implemented in multiple metal layers of the transparent sapphire substrate of the SOS-CMOS chips. The SOS-CMOS chip also hosts the Helmholtz coil and associated circuitry to stimulate the magnetically sensitive atomic resonance and temperature sensors. The prototype instrument has a total mass of fewer than 500 g and uses less than 1 W of power, while maintaining a sensitivity of 15 pT/√Hz at 1 Hz, comparable to present state-of-the-art absolute magnetometers.
منابع مشابه
Magnetometers for space measurements over a wide range of field intensities
2014 The exploration of the earth’s magnetic field out to interplanetary regions has required magnetometers capable of measuring a wide range of field intensities. The past decade has witnessed considerable development of such instruments. Representative of these are the rubidium vapor magnetometer and fluxgates flown on OGO-5 by the Goddard Space Flight Center. For scalar measurements the rubi...
متن کاملQuantum Degeneracy in an Atomic Fermi-Fermi-Bose Mixture
This thesis deals with dilute fermionic and bosonic quantum gases in the nK temperature regime. In the work presented here, the first quantum-degenerate mixture of two different fermionic atomic species and the first triple-degenerate Fermi-Fermi-Bose mixture were produced. The quantum-degenerate mixtures were realized using sympathetic cooling of the fermionic species 6Li and 40K by an evapora...
متن کاملParametric modulation of an atomic magnetometer.
The authors report on a rubidium atomic magnetometer designed for use in a shielded environment. Operating in the spin-exchange relaxation-free regime, the magnetometer utilizes parametric modulation of the z-magnetic field to suppress noise associated with airflow through the oven and to simultaneously detect x- and y-field components, using a single probe beam, with minimal loss of sensitivit...
متن کاملSqueezed-light optical magnetometry.
We demonstrate a light-shot-noise-limited magnetometer based on the Faraday effect in a hot unpolarized ensemble of rubidium atoms. By using off-resonant, polarization-squeezed probe light, we improve the sensitivity of the magnetometer by 3.2 dB. The technique could improve the sensitivity of the most advanced magnetometers and quantum nondemolition measurements of atomic spin ensembles.
متن کاملQuantum-enhanced Optical Magnetometer Using Squeezed Light in Atomic Vapor
We have built an optical magnetometer based on the nonlinear Faraday effect in hot Rb vapor and probe this device with both coherent light and polarization-squeezed light. We generate the squeezed light states using the polarization self-rotation effect in Rb vapor, optimized for the highest noise suppression, giving us a system which is allatomic. By probing with polarization-squeezed states o...
متن کامل