A Potassium Vapour Magnetometer Optically Pumped by a Diode Laser

Abstract

The magnetometer, that is described here, has been developed to be used in geomagnetic surveys. Since optical pumping was proposed by Kastler (1), as a powerful method to produce large changes in the relative population of Zeeman sublevels or hyperfine levels of the ground states of atoms through optical irradiation, the precise measurement of weak magnetic fields has been one of the many practical application ...