No Arabic abstract
We report on the use of radio-frequency optical atomic magnetometers for magnetic induction tomography measurements. We demonstrate the imaging of dummy targets of varying conductivities placed in the proximity of the sensor, in an unshielded environment at room-temperature and without background subtraction. The images produced by the system accurately reproduce the characteristics of the actual objects. Furthermore, we perform finite element simulations in order to assess the potential for measuring low-conductivity biological tissues with our system. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of an instrument based on optical atomic magnetometers for magnetic induction tomography imaging of biological samples, in particular for mapping anomalous conductivity in the heart.
We demonstrate a portable all-optical intrinsic scalar magnetic gradiometer composed of miniaturized cesium vapor cells and vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). Two cells, with an inner dimension of 5 mm x 5 mm x 5 mm and separated by a baseline of 5 cm, are driven by one VCSEL and the resulting Larmor precessions are probed by a second VCSEL through optical rotation. The off-resonant linearly polarized probe light interrogates two cells at the same time and the output of the intrinsic gradiometer is proportional to the magnetic field gradient measured over the given baseline. This intrinsic gradiometer scheme has the advantage of avoiding added noise from combining two scalar magnetometers. We achieve better than 18 fT/cm/rt-Hz sensitivity in the gradient measurement. Ultra-sensitive short-baseline magnetic gradiometers can potentially play an important role in many practical applications, such as nondestructive evaluation and unexploded ordnance (UXO) detection. Another application of the gradiometer is for magnetocardiography (MCG) in an unshielded environment. Real-time MCG signals can be extracted from the raw gradiometer readings. The demonstrated gradiometer greatly simplifies the MCG setup and may lead to ubiquitous MCG measurement in the future.
We use an atomic vapor cell as a frequency tunable microwave field detector operating at frequencies from GHz to tens of GHz. We detect microwave magnetic fields from 2.3 GHz to 26.4 GHz, and measure the amplitude of the sigma+ component of an 18 GHz microwave field. Our proof-of-principle demonstration represents a four orders of magnitude extension of the frequency tunable range of atomic magnetometers from their previous dc to several MHz range. When integrated with a high resolution microwave imaging system, this will allow for the complete reconstruction of the vector components of a microwave magnetic field and the relative phase between them. Potential applications include near-field characterisation of microwave circuitry and devices, and medical microwave sensing and imaging.
Despite being a canonical example of quantum mechanical perturbation theory, as well as one of the earliest observed spectroscopic shifts, the Stark effect contributes the largest source of uncertainty in a modern optical atomic clock through blackbody radiation. By employing an ultracold, trapped atomic ensemble and high stability optical clock, we characterize the quadratic Stark effect with unprecedented precision. We report the ytterbium optical clocks sensitivity to electric fields (such as blackbody radiation) as the differential static polarizability of the ground and excited clock levels: 36.2612(7) kHz (kV/cm)^{-2}. The clocks fractional uncertainty due to room temperature blackbody radiation is reduced an order of magnitude to 3 times 10^{-17}.
We describe the design and performance of a large magnetic trap for storing and cooling of atomic hydrogen (H). The trap operates in the vacuum space of a dilution refrigerator at a temperature of 1.5 K. Aiming at a large volume of the trap we implemented the octupole configuration of linear currents (Ioffe bars) for the radial confinement, combined with two axial pinch coils and a 3 T solenoid for the cryogenic H dissociator. The octupole magnet consists of eight race-track segments which are compressed towards each other with magnetic forces. This provides a mechanically stable and robust construction with a possibility of replacement or repair of each segment. A maximum trap depth of 0.54 K (0.8 T) was reached, corresponding to an effective volume of 0.5 liters for hydrogen gas at 50 mK. This is an order of magnitude larger than ever used for trapping atoms.
The Cosmic Axion Spin Precession Experiment (CASPEr) seeks to measure oscillating torques on nuclear spins caused by axion or axion-like-particle (ALP) dark matter via nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. A sample spin-polarized along a leading magnetic field experiences a resonance when the Larmor frequency matches the axion/ALP Compton frequency, generating precessing transverse nuclear magnetization. Here we demonstrate a Spin-Exchange Relaxation-Free (SERF) magnetometer with sensitivity $approx 1~{rm fT/sqrt{Hz}}$ and an effective sensing volume of 0.1 $rm{cm^3}$ that may be useful for NMR detection in CASPEr. A potential drawback of SERF-magnetometer-based NMR detection is the SERFs limited dynamic range. Use of a magnetic flux transformer to suppress the leading magnetic field is considered as a potential method to expand the SERFs dynamic range in order to probe higher axion/ALP Compton frequencies.