Gradient Magnetometry in Arbitrary Magnetic Fields.
Dr. Frank Narducci
Naval Air Systems Command
Abstract: Field-able scalar magnetometers have now reached impressive sensitivities on the order of 0.1 ρΤ /
with laboratory versions promising a few orders of magnitude improvement. However, at this level, practical applications at low frequencies, e.g. anti-submarine warfare (ASW), are limited by environmental noise and not fundamental sensor noise. A standard technique to circumvent this limitation is to employ two magnetometers separated by a given distance (Δz) and subtract the measurements (ΔΒ), resulting in a so called gradient measurement (ΔΒ / Δz) that can cancel out common noise. Recently, I proposed a method to measure magnetic field gradients using an atom interferometer. This method has the unique advantage of being an intrinsic gradiometer with a very short baseline. At the very heart of this device is an atom beam-splitter that can create super-positions of magnetic sensitive transitions using Raman pulses, in contrast with other existing atom interferometer sensors that use magnetically insensitive transitions. In this talk, I’ll discuss our work to measure Raman spectra in the presence of an arbitrary magnetic field. I’ll present the results (and pitfalls!) of our multi-level theoretical model and present the results of our recent measurements.
Bio: Dr. Narducci received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1996 from University of Rochester under the supervision of Prof. Leonard Mandel, a distinguished contributor to Quantum Optics. Since then, he has been working as a Physicist for the Naval Air Systems Laboratory in Patuxent River, MD, and has served as a program manager for the Office of Naval Research. He serves as a Guest Editor for Journal of Modern Optics, an Associate Editor for Physical Review A and as an Adjunct Editor for Physical Review Letters. His primary area of research interest is atom-field interactions, with a particular emphasis on atomic interferometry for precision metrology.
Tuesday, April 26h at 2:00 PM
Room F235, Technological Institute
Refreshments are served at 1:30 PM
