Magnetometry at the quantum limit of sensitivity and beyond

Wojciech Wasilewski,1 Kasper Jensen,1 Hanna Krauter,1 Jelmer J. Renema,1 and Eugene S. Polzik1
1
Niels Bohr Institute, Danish Quantum Optics Center QUANTOP,
Copenhagen University, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100 Copenhagen , Denmark
Ultimate sensitivity of metrology and sensing is defined by the fundamental principles of quantum
physics. The quantum state of a system determines the magnitude of its quantum fluctuations. The
optimal balance between the information about the system obtained during the measurement and
the destructive back action of the measurement on the measured object is again defined by the laws
of quantum mechanics. Here we demonstrate an atomic magnetometer operating at the fundamental
limit of sensitivity set by the quantum projection noise (PN) of atoms and beyond it, when assisted
by atomic entanglement. Using techniques developed for quantum information processing [1, 2, 3] we
apply an optimal sequence of state preparation, evolution, and the back-action evading measurement
to achieve the PN limited sensitivity. We furthermore experimentally demonstrate that Einstein-
arXiv:0907.2453v2 [quant-ph] 12 Oct 2009

Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement of atoms generated by a measurement enhances the sensitivity

to √pulsed magnetic fields. Quantum limited sensitivity improves with the number of atoms as
1/ NA . Here we demonstrate
√ the quantum limited sensing with 1.5 · 1012 atoms which allows us to
achieve sub-femtoTesla/ Hz sensitivity.

A number of measurements in physics can be viewed
as a measurement of a small angle of rotation of a vec-
tor. For NA atoms in a state with the magnetic quantum
number mF = F along a quantization axis x the vector
is a collective magnetic moment (spin) of the ensemble
with the length Jx = F NA . A magnetic field along the y
axis causes a rotation of J~ in the x−z plane. Polarization
of light propagating along z will be rotated proportional
to Jz due to the Faraday effect. Ultra-sensitive atomic
magnetometry is based on the measurement of this polar-
ization rotation [4]. From a quantum mechanical point
of view, this measurement is limited by quantum fluc-
tuations (shot noise) of light, the quantum backaction
noise of light onto atoms and the projection noise (PN)
of atoms. PN originates from the Heisenberg uncertainty
relation δJz ·δJy ≥ Jx /2, and corresponds to the minimal
2 RF fields, entanglement improves the sensitivity. Similar
transverse spin variances δJz,y = Jx /2 = F NA /2 for un-
correlated atoms in a coherent spin state [5]. Quantum
entanglement as the means of enhancing the performance
of metrology and sensing has been widely discussed theo-
retically [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. In [13, 14] entanglement
of a few ions have been used in spectroscopy. Recently
proof-of-principle measurements with larger atomic en-
sembles, which go beyond the PN limit have been imple-
mented in interferometry with 103 atoms [15] and Ram-
sey spectroscopy [16, 17] with up to 105 atoms.
In this Letter we demonstrate quantum limited de-
tection of a radio-frequency (rf) magnetic field by an
atomic vapour magnetometer operating with thousands
of billions of atoms. In the magnetometer J~ precesses at
the Larmor frequency Ω/2π = 322kHz around a dc field
B = 0.92G applied along the x axis and an rf field with
the frequency Ω is applied in the z − y plane (Fig. 1a).
In the experiment (Fig. 2a) the magnetometer detects
an rf pulse with a constant amplitude BRF and duration
τ (Fourier limited full width half maximum bandwidth
δ = 0.88τ −1 ≈ τ −1 ). The mean value of the projection
of the atomic spin on the y − z plane in the rotating
frame after the rf pulse is ΓBRF Jx T2 [1 − exp(−τ /T2 )]/2.
Here T2 is the spin decoherence time during the rf pulse
and Γ = Ω/B = 2.2 · 1010 rad/(sec·Tesla) for caesium.
Equating the mean value to the PN uncertainty we get
for the minimal detectable field under the PN limited
measurement
h p  i−1
Bmin = Γ F NA /2 · T2 1 − e−τ /T2 . (1)
Note that for the best sensitivity to the BRF with a
given δ the atomic bandwidth should be narrow: δ =
τ −1 ≥ T2 −1 (see Supplementary Information for details).
A long T2 also helps to take advantage of the entangle-
ment of atoms. Entangled states are fragile and have a
shorter lifetime T2E < T2 . As we demonstrate here, un-
der the condition δ −1 < T2E < T2 , that is for broadband
conclusions have been reached theoretically for atomic
clocks in [8, 10] and for dc magnetometry in [9].
In our experiment a long magnetometer coherence time
T2 > 30msec is achieved by the time resolved quantum
spin state preparation (optical pumping), evolution, and
measurement, as in quantum information processing pro-
tocols [2, 3]. In this way T2 is not reduced by the optical
pumping and/or measurement-induced decoherence.
PN limited sensitivity requires, besides elimination of
the technical noise, the reduction of the back action noise
of the measurement and of the shot noise of the probe
light.
The back action noise comes from the Stark shift im-
posed by quantum fluctuations of light polarization on
Jylab in the laboratory frame when Jzlab is measured. Since
Jzlab and Jylab experience Larmor precession, both of them
accumulate the back action noise [1, 18]. As proposed in
[1] the effect of this noise can be canceled if two atomic
ensembles with orientations Jx and −Jx are used. Fig. 2a
presents the sketch of the magnetometer layout which
is used for the back action evading measurement of the
BRF .
 2

FIG. 2: (a) Schematic of the experimental setup. Cubic 22mm

paraffin coated cells filled with caesium are placed in the dc
field B in two separate magnetic shields. The atoms are opti-
cally pumped along B so that the directions of the collective
spins in the two cells (black arrows) are opposite. A pulse of
the magnetic field BRF at the frequency Ω is applied orthogo-
nally to the B field. One (or two for the entanglement assisted
magnetometry) pulse of the top-hat shaped probe beam (di-
ameter 21mm) passes through the cells, and its polarization
rotation is detected via the differential photocurrent of two
detectors (HWP - half wave plate). The lock-in amplifier mea-
sures the cos Ωt and sin Ωt components of the photocurrent,
which are then electronically processed, as discussed in the
text. (b) Pulse sequence for projection noise limited magne-
tometry. The temporal mode function for the probe is shown
with a dashed black curve. (c) Pulse sequence and temporal
modes for entanglement-assisted magnetometry.

FIG. 1: (a) Radio-frequency magnetometer. The atomic spin

J~ precesses in crossed dc and rf magnetic fields (the blue
dashed spiral). The state of the spin in the end of the rf pulse
(black dashed circle) is measured using probe light, on which
the precessing J~ imposes an oscillating polarization rotation.
(b) Raw experimental data. Grey points are the results of the
polarization rotation measurements without the BRF . The
blue and the dashed black lines show the standard deviation
of the distribution, and the contribution due to the projec-
FIG. 3: Level scheme and optical fields used in the magne-
tion noise (PN), respectively. The spin precession shown in
tometer. The probe is blue detuned by ∆ = 850MHz from
(a) corresponds to the spin displacement in the rotating frame
the F = 4 → F = 5 hyperfine component of the D2 line at
indicated by the dashed blue arrow. The red points are the
852nm. The diagrams on the left and on the right correspond
results of measurements taken after a 15 msec rf pulse with
to the two cells used in the experiment.
BRF = 36 fT. (Inset) Power spectrum of the photocurrent
(centered at Ω) taken under the same conditions as in the
main figure except the rf was applied to only one cell illus-
trating the possibility of the magnetic gradient measurement. scribed by the Ŝ2 Stokes operator can be derived [20].
out out
The red/black spectrum is taken with the rf pulse on/off. The The cos/sin components Ŝ2c and Ŝ2s experimentally
narrow peak of the red/black spectrum is the atomic spin sig- measured by the lock-in detection are then:
nal/projection noise. The bandwidth of these features is set r
mainly by the atomic Te2 = 3.5msec in the presence of the p Φ
probe. The broad part of the spectrum is the shot noise of
out in 2 2
Ŝ2c = Ŝ2c 1 − ξ κ + κ (Jˆz1 + Jˆz2 ), (2)
2F NA
light with the width set by the detection bandwidth.
out
with the equation for Ŝ2s obtained by the replacement
ˆ ˆ
Jz → Jy . In the two-cell setup Ŝ2 contains information
The interaction Hamiltonian Ĥint between the probe about the commuting rotating frame operators Jˆy+ =
light and spin polarized alkali atoms is discussed in de- Jˆy1
in
+ Jˆy2
in
and Jˆz+ = Jˆz1
in
+ Jˆz2
in
simultaneously, which are
−1
p
tail in the Supplementary Information and in [19, 20]). displaced by the BRF . κ = ξ 1 − exp(−2γswap T ) is
p
Using Ĥint , the magnetometry signal, i.e., the Ω Fourier the light-atoms coupling constant, and ξ = 14a2 /a1 ,
component of the photocurrent (Fig. 2a), which is de- where a2 , a1 are tensor/vector polarizabilities. In case of

γswap T  1, corresponding to either rather large probe
detuning ∆, or to a relatively small photon flux Φ, as
in [1, 2], Eq. (2) reduces to the quantum nondemolition
(QND) interaction. Here we implement a strong mea-
surement limit, γswap T  1 in which the light and atoms
swap their quantum states. This leads to a strongly sup-
pressed contribution of the probe shot noise (first term
in Eq. (2)) compared to the contribution of the PN noise
(second term). With this optimal measurement the probe
shot noise decreases exponentially with time and with op-
tical depth d, whereas in the QND case it stays constant.
The total rate of the atomic coherence decay γtot in-
cludes the coherent swap rate γswap , the spontaneous
emission rate η1 (note that γswap ∼ η1 ), collisions, and
magnetic dephasing. The PN limit can be approached
when γtot ' γswap = 0.43msec, which has been achieved
with a 15mW probe detuned by 850MHz. The probe
losses and decoherence are dominated by reflection on
cell walls and on detection optics, since its absorption in
the gas is negligible.
Results of a series of measurements obtained at 32◦ C
corresponding to NA = 2 · 7.2(7) · 1011 are presented in
Fig. 1b. NA is found from the Faraday rotation angle 19◦
of an auxiliary probe beam sent along the x axis. See the
Methods section for description of the PN calibration.
Neglecting the time used for pumping and probing√the
atoms, we obtain the sensitivity of 3.6 · 10−16 Tesla/ Hz
from these data which is very√close to the PN limited
sensitivity of 2.9 · 10−16 Tesla/ Hz found from Eq. (1)
using the measured value of T2 = 32 ms. The optimal
temporal mode function for this measurement has γopt =
1.0ms−1 which is twice the value of γtot = 0.5ms−1 (see
Supplementary Information).
The best experimental sensitivity including the du-
ration of optical pumping (6ms), probing (1.5ms) and
τ = 22ms (Fourier √ limited bandwidth ∼ 40Hz) is
4.2(8) · 10−16 Tesla/ Hz which approaches the best to-
date atomic rf magnetometry sensitivity [21] obtained
with 104 times more atoms. This is to be expected since
PN limited magnetometry yields the best possible sensi-
tivity per atom achievable without entanglement.
We now turn to the entanglement-assisted magnetom-
etry. As first demonstrated in [1] the measurement
out
of the Stokes operators Ŝ2c,s can generate the state
of atoms in the two cells which fulfils the Einstein—
Podolsky—Rosen (EPR) entanglement condition for two
cells
 with macroscopic
  spins Jx and
  −Jx : ΣEPR =
Var Jˆy1in
+ Jˆy2
in
+ Var Jˆz1
in
+ Jˆz2
in
/2Jx < 1. To take
advantage of the entanglement in our magnetometer we
introduce the entangling probe pulse applied before the
rf pulse in the time sequence (Fig. 2c). Entanglement is
detectable as correlations between the probe pulses ap-
plied before and after the rf pulse. It can be visualized
as correlations between the grey and red points shown in
Fig. 1b. The degree of entanglement and the sensitivity
are optimized by choosing suitable rising/falling probe
modes e±γt for the first/second probe modes shown in
3
FIG. 4: Entanglement assisted magnetometry results. (a)
The magnetometer noise floor for the entangled state of the
two cells (circles) normalized to the noise obtained with atoms
in the coherent spin state (squares) as a function of the delay
between the first and the second probe pulses. The fit yields
the entanglement lifetime T2E = 4msec. (b) Sensitivity of
the PN limited magnetomer (squares) and the entanglement
assisted magnetometer (circles) as a function of the rf pulse
bandwidth (inverse pulse duration). The standard BRF =
36 fT pulse is applied to NA = 3 · 1011 atoms. The duration
of the first/second probe pulse is 2/3msec, the duration of
the pumping cycle 6msec. (c) Signal/noise ratio times the rf
bandwidth for the entanglement assisted (circles) and the PN
limited (squares) magnetometer.
(Fig. 2c), as described in the Supplementary Informa-
tion.
Fig.
 4a shows the
  magnetometer noise
out


Var Ŝ2c in
1 − ξ 2 κ2 Var Ŝ2c + κ2 ΦΣEPR /2 as a
function of the rf pulse duration for entangled atoms
and for atoms in the coherent spin state. The best noise
reduction of about −1.5dB (-30%) is obtained for short
times corresponding to the rf bandwidth δRF ≥ 1 kHz.
Fig. 4b presents the sensitivity improvement obtained
with these entangled states compared to the PN limited
magnetometry. 15(1)% entanglement-assisted improve-
ment of the sensitivity is achieved for short (broadband)
rf pulses. Fig. 4c shows that the S/N ratio times δRF is
improved by a constant factor for δRF much greater than
the inverse entanglement lifetime (πT2E )−1 = 70Hz.
In summary we report a magnetometer operating at
the projection noise limit of atoms and beyond it when
assisted by entanglement of 1012 atoms. To the best of
our knowledge, our results present entanglement assisted
metrology with the highest to-date number √ of atoms.
The absolute sensitivity at the sub-femtoTesla/ Hz level
is comparable to the best atomic magnetometers operat-
ing with orders of magnitude more atoms. The two-cell
setup can also serve as the magnetic gradient-meter if the
direction of the probe in the second cell is flipped or if
the rf pulse is applied to one cell only. Increasing the size
of the cells to a 5 cm cube √ should yield the sensitivity of
the order of 5 · 10−17 T/ Hz which approaches the sensi-
tivity of the best superconducting SQUID magnetometer
[22]. The degree of entanglement ΣEPR can, in principle,
reach the ratio of the tensor to vector polarizabilities ξ 2
which is 0.16 or −8dB for our experiment. This limit
has not been achieved in the present experiment due to
various decoherence effects, including spontaneous emis-

sion, Cs-Cs collisions and probe light-induced collisions.
Increasing the size of the cells may help to reduce some
of those effects since a larger optical depth will then be
achieved for a given density of atoms.
Methods
Projection noise calibration. The probe light changes
the atomic state, as described by the counterpart of
Eq. (2):
r and the rf bandwidth δ:
p 2F NA in
Jˆy−
0
= (Jˆy1
0
−Jˆy2
0
) = (Jˆy1 −Jˆy2 ) 1 − ξ 2 κ2 +κ Ŝ3c ,
Φ sens ∝ p
(3)
where 0 denotes the atomic state after the interaction.
in
Ŝ3c is the 322kHz cosine component of the Stokes oper-
ator given by the difference of the number of the right
hand and left hand circular polarized photons. Using an
electro-optical modulator we can create a certain aver-
age value in
p of Ŝ3c and then calibrate it in the units of shot2
noise Φ/2 by homodyne detection. To determine κ
for a certain light power andp atom number, we first send
a 1msec pulse with hŜ3c in
i = Φ/2, which is mapped on
the atoms. Then we flip the sign of Jˆy2 and Jˆz2 by mo-
mentarily increasing the dc magnetic field and send a sec-
ond 1msec light pulse. Now hJˆy− 0 out
i is mapped on hŜ2s
following equation (2), and measurement on the second

out
pulse yields hŜ2s i = κ2 . Using κ2 we find Var S2c,s
out
from Eq. (2) and by comparing it to the measured noise
level we calibrate the detection efficiency η = 0.80(5).
Finally we calibrate the atomic displacement
(hJˆy i, hJˆz i) caused
√ by a particular BRF field in
units of PN, F NA . After applying the BRF we
send a short probe pulse with a known value of
κ. Then the mean value of the homodyne signal is
√ p
hS̃ˆ2out i = κ η Φ/2F NA (hJy1 + Jy2 i + ihJz1 − Jz2 i).
An RF pulse with the same strength and duration can
then be used to measure κ and evaluate the noise of
measurements at different probe powers.
Supplementary information
A. Sensitivity and bandwidth
To examine the connection between magnetometer sen-
sitivity and the bandwidth of the rf field we analyze the
case of an exponentially decaying rf field with amplitude
BRF e−δt . From the norm square of the Fourier trans-
form, we find the FWHM of the rf field to be δ/π (with
units Hz). After applying the rf field for a time t, the
projection of the atomic spin on the y − z plane is
ΓBrf Jx e−δt − e−t/T2
|J⊥ (t)| = · 1 . (4)
T2 − δ
2 it is assumed that the entanglement (corresponding to
4
The maximal spin projection is reached in the time
 
1
tmax = ln (δT2 ) / δ − ≈ min (T2 , 1/δ) (5)
T2
which is on the order of the smallest of the atomic life-
time T2 and the inverse rf bandwidth 1/δ. At this
time the largest
p signal to noise ratio is reached S/N =
|J⊥ (tmax )| / Jx /2.
Using the time tmax we obtain an estimate for the PN
limited sensitivity which has the following scaling with
the two parameters, the magnetometer bandwidth 1/T2
√
δ for δ  1/T2 using the time t ≈ 1/δ.
1/T2 for δ  1/T2 using the time t ≈ T2 .
(6)
For
√ large rf bandwidths the sensitivity is proportional
to δ and independent of T2 . For smallp rf bandwidths
the sensitivity is proportional to 1/T2 and inde-
pendent of δ. The magnetometer is therefore most
sensitive to rf fields with small bandwidths δ ≤ 1/T2 .
Similar conclusions have been reached theoretically for
atomic clocks in [8, 10] and for dc magnetometry in [9].
From the above considerations we can determine when
entanglement will improve the sensitivity. In general,
an entangled state will have shorter lifetime than a
state which is not entangled: T2E < T2 , where T2E is
i,
the lifetime of the entangled state. Since a reduction
of the atomic lifetime degrade the sensitivity for small
rf bandwidths, entanglement only helps in the opposite
case of large rf bandwidths δ  1/T2E .
Experimental data showing the improvement due to
entanglement is presented Fig. 4c in the main text. In
the experiment we applied a rf pulse with duration τ and
constant amplitude for which the FWHM bandwidth is
0.88/T ≈ τ −1 . In Fig. 4c we plot the signal to noise ratio
(S/N ) times the rf bandwidth δ = 1/τ as a function of
the rf bandwidth, squares represent data without the use
of entanglement and circles represent data with the use
of entanglement (created by a measurement prior to the
rf pulse). For rf bandwidths δ = 0.2 − 2 kHz the signal to
noise ratio is clearly improved by the usage of entangle-
ment. The improvement increases with the bandwidth
due to the smaller lifetime of the entangled state. Since
the sensitivity is inversely proportional to the signal to
noise ratio, the improvement in the signal to noise ratio
is directly an improvement of the sensitivity.
To guide the eye, fits to the data are plotted in Fig. 4c.
For the case of no entanglement, the expected depen-
dence on δ and T2 is (S/N ) · δ ∝ δ · T2 1 − e−1/δT2 ,


since a rf pulse with constant amplitude creates
the trans-
verse spin component |J⊥ (τ )| ∝ T2 1 − e−τ /T2 . A fit to
this function is shown as a dashed line, where in the fit
T2 = 32 ms was fixed and the proportionality constant
was the only free parameter. For the case of entangle-
ment the data is fitted to a slightly different model, where

the noise) decays at a rate T2E different than the decay
rate T2 of the mean value.
B. Derivation of the magnetometer signal
The interaction of the probe light and the atoms
[19, 20] of the magnetometer is given by the Hamiltonian
Ĥint ∼ −χa â†− b̂† + χp â†+ b̂ + H.c. where the first/second
term describes forward scattering of a probe light into the
low/high frequency sideband modes â± = â(ω±Ω) (Fig. 3
in the main text) mediated by the collective atomic coher-
√
PNA
ence b̂ = eiΩt / NA k=1 |mF = 4ik hmF = 3|k . Those
operators are√directly connected to the Stokes operator
Ŝ2 (t) = e−iΩt Φ(â− + â†+ )/2 where Φ is the photon flux,
and to the collective spin as Jˆy/z = F NA /2 (b̂±b̂† ). For
p p
the second ensemble pumped into mF = −4 (Fig. 3) â−
and â+ are interchanged in the Hamiltonian. Coefficients
 2
γspont λ2
χa,p obey (χ2p − χ2a )/2 = 14a1 a2 ΦN A2
a
8∆ 2π where
A = 4.8cm2 is the cell crossection, γspont = 5.2MHz is the
natural linewidth, ∆ = 850MHz is the detuning of the
probe, and the vector/tensor polarizabilities a1 /a2 can
be found, for example, in [23]. The above Hamiltonian
describes the alkali atom magnetometry more accurately
than the quantum nondemolition (QND) interaction used
in [1, 2, 6, 7].
The term with χa is responsible for entanglement be-
tween photons and atoms as in quantum teleportation
[3] and quantum repeaters [24], whereas the term with
χp describes quantum state swapping between photons
and atoms. During the measurement the probe light
and atoms swap their states with the rate γswap =
(χ2p − χ2a )/2 ∼ d · η1 under the condition χp > χa ful-
filled for a probe polarized orthogonally to the B field
(Fig. 1a in the main text). d is the resonant optical depth
and η1 is the probability of probe induced spontaneous
emission per second. The longer the measurement lasts,
the less information about the initial atomic state is left
in the atoms. This explains [20] why the magnetometry
signal should be detected by an exponentially decaying
light mode: S̃ˆ2out = 0 dt Nγ e−γt Ŝ2 (t)eiΩt where T is the
RT
measurement duration and Nγ is the normalization of
e−γt (Fig. 2b in the main text).
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5
C. Experimental optimization of the signal to noise
ratio
The time dependent polarization rotation Ŝ2out (t) os-
cillating at Ω = 322kHz is detected with the resolu-
tion τ ≈ 16µs. Let us introduce a complex output
S̃ˆ2 (t) = t−τ dt0 Ŝ2 (t0 )eiΩL t /τ . We measure both the av-
Rt 0
erage value hS̃ˆ (t)i as a function of time and a two-time
2
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is just hEi/ h|E|2 i. By taking the variational derivative
of this expression with respect to w∗ (t) we find that the
optimal weight function satisfies:
Z
hS̃ˆ2 (t)i = dt0 hS̃ˆ2∗ (t)S̃ˆ2 (t0 )i − hS̃ˆ2∗ (t)ihS̃ˆ2 (t0 )i wopt (t0 ).
 
(7)
From the data we find wopt (t) to be close to the function
e−γt with the decay rate γ ' 2γtot .
D. Optimal use of entanglement
The optimal function wopt (t) in the second pulse is
found as detailed above. Next we find an optimal weight
function for the first pulse w1 (t). The associated estima-
tor E1 should provide maximum information about the
atomic state before BRF , that is, the best estimation of
E in the absence of BRF or of the E − hEi in its pres-
ence. Therefore the Var (E − E1 ) should be minimized.
By taking the variational derivative the optimal w1 (t) is
found to satisfy
Z
hS̃ˆ2 (t)i = dt0 hS̃ˆ2∗ (t)S̃ˆ2 (t0 )i − hS̃ˆ2∗ (t)ihS̃ˆ2 (t0 )i w1,opt (t0 ),
 
(8)
where t is in the 2nd pulse and t0 is in the 1st pulse.
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