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  • Open Access

He3 absolute magnetometer at geomagnetic field

Yuefeng Lu, Ekrem Abdukerim, Baichuan Li, Liwei Lei, Teng Wu*, and Hong Guo†

  • State Key Laboratory of Photonics and Communications, School of Electronics, and Center for Quantum Information Technology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

  • *Contact author: wuteng@pku.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: hongguo@pku.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043106 – Published 27 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dx7x-wdgv

Abstract

The high accuracy of the nuclear spin g factor provides a feasible way to construct absolute magnetometry. However, at geomagnetic field, the sensitivity and accuracy of the nuclear spin magnetometer are limited by the ratio of nuclear-spin polarization and the detection efficiency of low-frequency signal. We propose an absolute magnetometer scheme based on the nuclear spin of He3, demonstrating an order-of-magnitude improved sensitivity and onefold improved accuracy compared to a proton magnetometer for the current geomagnetic field standard. We present systematic estimations on the sources of errors within the He3 magnetometer. Through adopting multipass-probe scheme and radio-frequency power stabilization, it is promising to further improve the accuracy of the He3 magnetometer to 100 ppb at geomagnetic field, paving the way to the next generation of geomagnetic field standard.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043106– Published 27 October, 2025
  • Received 23 March 2025
  • Accepted 12 September 2025
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