Light-shift suppression in a miniaturized Mx optically pumped Cs magnetometer array with enhanced resonance signal using off-resonant laser pumping

The performance of an optically pumped M-x magnetometer with miniaturized Cs cell at earth's magnetic field strength (50 mu T) is investigated. Operation using detuned high intensity laser light is shown to be superior to the conventional resonant operation in terms of the projected shot-noise-limited (50 fT/root Hz) and the actual noise-limited sensitivity using a noise compensation method. The Zeeman light shift effect, emerging due to the off-resonant circularly polarized laser radiation and leading to a strong orientational dependence of the measurement, is suppressed by averaging two identical magnetometer configurations pumped with oppositely circularly polarized light. A residual heading error within the range of 14nT, limited by the present experimental characterization setup, was achieved. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America