Alignment of a Vector Magnetometer to an Optical Prism

Abstract

A method for alignment of a vector magnetometer to a rigidly attached prism is presented. This enables optical comparison of the magnetometer axes to physical surfaces in an apparatus, and thus an absolute determination of the magnetic field direction in space. This is in contrast with more common techniques, which focus on precise determination of the relative angles between magnetometer axes, and so are more suited to measuring differences in the direction of magnetic fields. Here we demonstrate precision better than 500 $\mu$rad on a fluxgate magnetometer, which also gives the coil orthogonality errors to a similar precision. The relative sensitivity of the 3 axes is also determined, with precision of about 5$\times 10^{-4}$.