Abstract
Application of nonlinear magneto-optical (Faraday) rotation to magnetometry is investigated. Our experimental setup consists of a modulation polarimeter that measures rotation of the polarization plane of a laser beam resonant with transitions in Rb. Rb vapor is contained in an evacuated cell with antirelaxation coating that enables atomic ground-state polarization to survive many thousand wall collisions. This leads to ultranarrow features in the magnetic-field dependence of optical rotation. The potential sensitivity of this scheme to sub- magnetic fields as a function of atomic density, light intensity, and light frequency is investigated near the and lines of It is shown that through an appropriate choice of parameters the shot-noise-limited sensitivity to small magnetic fields can reach
- Received 26 April 2000
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.62.043403
©2000 American Physical Society