Experimental Investigation on a Highly Sensitive Atomic Magnetometer

A highly sensitive all-optical atomic magnetometer based on the magnetooptical effect which uses the advanced technique of single laser beam detection is reported and demonstrated experimentally. A sensitivity of 0.5pT/Hz^1/2 is obtained by analyzing the magnetic noise spectrum, which exceeds that of most traditional magnetometers. This kind of atomic magnetometer is very compact, has a low power consumption, and has a high theoretical sensitivity limit, which make it suitable for many applications.     

Investigation of the thermal adaptability for a mobile cold atom gravimeter

The cold atom gravimeter offers the prospect of a new generation of inertial sensors for field applications. We accomplish a mobile atom gravimeter. With the compact and stable system, a sensitivity of 1.4×10~(-7)g·Hz~(-1/2)is achieved.Moreover, a continuous gravity monitoring of 80 h is carried out. However, the harsh outdoor environment is a big challenge for the atom gravimeter when it is for field applications. In this paper, we present the preliminary investigation of the thermal adaptability for our mobile cold atom gravimeter. Here, we focus on the influence of the air temperature on the performance of the atom gravimeter. The responses to different factors(such as laser power, fiber coupling efficiency,etc.) are evaluated when there is a great temperature shift of 10℃. The result is that the performances of all the factors deteriorate to different extent, nevertheless, they can easily recover as the temperature comes back. Finally, we conclude that the variation of air temperature induces the increase of noise and the system error of the atom gravimeter as well, while the process is reversible with the recovery of the temperature.     

Participation in the absolute gravity comparison with a compact cold atom gravimeter

The first Asia-Pacific Comparison of Absolute Gravimeters(APMP.M.G-K1) was organized by the National Institute of Metrology(NIM) of China from December 21, 2015 to March 25, 2016 in Changping, Beijing. Our compact cold atom gravimeter(CCAG) was transported from Hangzhou to Beijing with a long distance of about1200 km to participate in this comparison. The CCAG is the only one, to the best of our knowledge, that is based on the principle of atom interferometry among all the instruments. Absolute gravity in the indicated three test sites has been measured as requested by the organizer. The sensitivity of our CCAG is estimated to be90 μGal∕Hz p, even when the measurements are carried out without any vibration isolation. Besides, the accuracy of this gravimeter has been evaluated to be about 19 μGal by considering the significant system errors.Our results show a good agreement with the given reference value.