Breaking the energy-symmetry-based propagation growth blockade in magneto-optical rotation

Published

December 6, 2018

Author(s)

Chengjie Zhu, Feng Zhou, Eric Y. Zhu, Edward W. Hagley, Lu Deng

Abstract

The magneto-optical polarization rotation effect has prolific applications in various research areas spanning the scientific spectrum including space and interstellar research, nano- technology and material science, biomedical imaging, and sub-atomic particle research. In nonlinear magneto-optical rotation (NMOR), the intensity of a linearly-polarized probe field affects the rotation of its own polarization plane while propagating in a magnetized medium. However, typical signals of conventional $\Lambda-$scheme atomic magnetometers based on NMOR effect are peculiarly small, necessitating the employment of sophisticated equipment under complex operational conditions. Here, we show the presence of an energy-symmetry blockade that undermines the NMOR in the conventional $\Lambda-$scheme atomic magnetometers. We further demonstrate, both experimentally and theoretically, an inelastic wave-mixing technique that breaks this NMOR blockade, resulting in more than two orders of magnitude NMOR optical signal- to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement never seen in the conventional single-beam $\Lambda-$scheme atomic magnetometers. This new technique, demonstrated with substantially reduced light intensities, may lead to many applications especially in the field of chip-level photonics- based bio-magnetic research and high-resolution passive magnetic imaging.

Citation

Physical Review Applied

Volume

10

Issue

6

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.10.064013

Local Download

Keywords

nonlinear magneto-optical rotation, magnetometry, nonlinear optics, atomic physics

Citation

Zhu, C. , Zhou, F. , Zhu, E. , Hagley, E. and Deng, L. (2018), Breaking the energy-symmetry-based propagation growth blockade in magneto-optical rotation, Physical Review Applied, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.10.064013, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=923972 (Accessed October 8, 2025)