https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2019-100094-1
Regular Article
PicoTesla absolute field readings with a hybrid 3He/87Rb magnetometer
1
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
2
Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen Switzerland
3
Institut für Physik, Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität, 55128 Mainz, Germany
4
Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
5
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Berlin, Germany
a e-mail: c.abel@sussex.ac.uk
b e-mail: georg.bison@psi.ch
Received:
19
February
2019
Accepted:
24
May
2019
Published online:
23
July
2019
We demonstrate the use of a hybrid 3He/87 magnetometer to measure absolute magnetic fields in the pT range. The measurements were undertaken by probing time-dependent 3He magnetisation using 87Rb zero-field magnetometers. Measurements were taken to demonstrate the use of the magnetometer in cancelling residual fields within a magnetic shield. It was shown that the absolute field could be reduced to the 10 pT level by using field readings from the magnetometer. Furthermore, the hybrid magnetometer was shown to be applicable for the reduction of gradient fields by optimising the effective 3He T2 time. This procedure represents a convenient and consistent way to provide a near zero magnetic field environment which can be potentially used as a base for generating desired magnetic field configurations for use in precision measurements.
Key words: Atomic Physics
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
