High contrast atomic magnetometer based on coherent population trapping

We present an experimental and theoretical investigation of the coherent population trapping (CPT) resonance excited on the D1 line of 87Rb atoms by bichromatic linearly polarized laser light. The experimental results show that a lin parallel to lin transition scheme is a promising alternative to the conventional circular-circular transition scheme for an atomic magnetometer. Compared with the circular light transition scheme, linear light accounts for high-contrast transmission resonances, which makes this excitation scheme promising for high-sensitivity magnetometers. We also use linear light and circular light to detect changes of a standard magnetic field, separately.