Investigation of the nonlinear CPT spectrum of 87Rb and its application for large dynamic magnetic measurement Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61473166) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 014M560958)

• Published in: Chinese physics B 2017-06, Vol.26 (6)
• Main Authors: Xu, Chi, Wang, Shi-Guang, Hu, Yong, Feng, Yan-Ying, Wang, Li-Jun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: coherent population trapping; large dynamic magnetometer; nonlinear Zeeman effect
• ISSN: 1674-1056
• DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/26/6/064203

The coherent population trapping (CPT) phenomenon has found widespread application in quantum precision measurements. Various designs based on the narrow resonant spectrum corresponding to the linear Zeeman effect have been demonstrated to achieve high performance. In this article, the nonlinear Zeeman split of the CPT spectrum of 87Rb in the lin ∥ lin setup is investigated. We observe re-split phenomenon for both magnetic sensitive and magnetic insensitive CPT resonant lines at a large magnetic field. The re-split in the magnetic sensitive lines raises a practical problem to magnetometers worked in the lin ∥ lin setup while the other one shows a good potential for applications in large magnetic field. We propose a design based on the nonlinear split of the magnetic insensitive lines and test its performance. It provides a much larger measurement range compared to the linear one, offering an option for atomic magnetometers where a large dynamic range is preferred.