Eur. Phys. J. D (2015) 69: 262
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-60509-5

Regular Article

Investigation of the intrinsic sensitivity of a ³He/Cs magnetometer

¹ Physics Department, University of Fribourg, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland
² Department of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg-University, 55122 Mainz, Germany
³ Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen, Switzerland
⁴ Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, 10587 Berlin, Germany
⁵ Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia

^a e-mail: kochhc@googlemail.com
^b Present address: Instituut voor Kern- en Stralingsfysica, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
^c Present address: LogrusData, Vienna, Austria

Received: 8 September 2015
Received in final form: 8 October 2015
Published online: 26 November 2015

Abstract

We report on extensive studies on the intrinsic sensitivity of a combined ³He/Cs magnetometer. The magnetometer relies on the detection of the free spin precession of nuclear spin polarized ³He by optically pumped cesium magnetometers. We characterize the relevant processes involved in the detection and quantify their impact on the total sensitivity of the magnetometer. An expression is derived that predicts the sensitivity of this magnetometer scheme and the results are compared to experiments. Excellent agreement is found between theory and experiments, and implications for an application of a ³He/Cs magnetometer in an experiment searching for a permanent neutron electric dipole moment are discussed.