Colliding-probe bi-atomic magnetometers via energy circulation: Breaking symmetry-enforced magneto-optical rotation blockade

Abstract

We have developed an inelastic wave scattering based colliding-probe bi-atomic magnetometer theory. We show a propagation growth blockade in single probe based magnetic field sensing schemes, revealing the root cause of strong suppression of nonlinear magneto-optical rotation effect (NMORE) in single probe based atomic magnetometers. We further show, both experimentally and theoretically, a colliding probe bi-atomic magnetometer that lifts this NMORE blockade. The directional energy circulation in this new atomic magnetometry technique results in more than two orders of magnitude increase in NMORE signal as well as greater than 6dB increase of magnetic field detection sensitivity. The new technique may have broad applications in photon gates and switching operations.