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Dead-zone-free orientation-based pulsed atomic magnetometer

Jinghong Xu, Liwei Jiang*,†, Yuntian Zou, Xu Li, Haowen Tian, and Wenjing Tian

Chi Fang, Yuanqiang Chen, and Jiali Liu

  • Institute of Large-scale Scientific Facility and Centre for Zero Magnetic Field Science, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China and Hangzhou Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou 310051, Zhejiang, China

  • National Institute of Extremely-Weak Magnetic Field Infrastructure, Hangzhou 310051, Zhejiang, China

  • *Also at Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei 230088, China.
  • †Contact author: jiangliwei@buaa.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023086 – Published 29 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/3t3d-s3kx

Abstract

The dead zones of atomic magnetometers bring great challenges for the mobile applications in high-sensitivity magnetic field measurement. To solve this fundamental problem, we present a dead-zone-free orientation-based atomic magnetometer employing free-induction-decay (FID) scheme. A modulation scheme combining synchronous optical pumping and radio frequency pulse manipulation is utilized to achieve the free precession of spin polarization in all magnetic field orientations, and the FID signals are detected in two directions with an orthogonal pump-probe light configuration. We perform a comprehensive theoretical analysis of spin polarization evolution for arbitrary magnetic field orientations, and both simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the fusion of information from the pump and probe beams enables the dead-zone-free measurement of the magnetometer, with the sensor exhibiting a sensitivity in the range of 0.6–1.4pT/Hz1/2 across all directions. The proposed scheme is of great significance for the advancement of pulsed atomic magnetometers and their various applications in mobile platforms.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023086– Published 29 April, 2026
  • Received 12 November 2025
  • Accepted 6 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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