All-Optical Cesium Atomic Magnetometer with High Sensitivity

An all-optical cesium magnetometer with high sensitivity based on absorptive detection is reported. The experiment achieves a polarized rotational spectrum of the probe light which is induced by circular dichroism and a quarter wave plate together. The frequency response of the rotational spectrum is 1.8 mrad/Hz at Larmor precession resonance. Analyzing the signal-to-noise ratio from the experimentally observed spectrum, we predict that the magnetic measurement sensitivity of 0.3 pT/Hz^1/2 would be obtained in the responsive range from 20 nT to 2000 nT.