Atomic Triaxial Magnetometer

This project supports the development of a new class of high performance vector magnetometers with sensitivity, drift, and accuracy  better all other types of vector sensor. The sensor is based on the fundamental properties of the rubidium atom, which is probed using a light field to make the magnetic field measurements. The sensor simultaneously supplies both total field and vector field measurements at a bandwidth of 100 Hz. The sensor is also significantly smaller and more compact than a competing type of vector sensor, the fluxgate magnetometer.  The project has three periods, and at the end of each period a vector magnetometer will be developed with progressively higher performance. At the end of the first year, a compact sensor using a microfabricated physics package will be built. At the end of the second year, a larger, higher performance sensor will be built. Finally, at the end of the third year, we will target all the performance metrics in the solicitation, far exceeding the state of the art vector magnetometer performance.