Proof of the feasibility of a nanocell-based wide-range optical magnetometer

We present an experimental scheme performing scalar magnetometry based on the fitting of Rb D-2 line spectra recorded by derivative selective reflection spectroscopy from an optical nanometric-thick cell. To demonstrate its efficiency, the magnetometer is used to measure the inhomogeneous magnetic field produced by a permanent neodymium-iron-boron alloy ring magnet at different distances. The computational tasks are realized by relatively cheap electronic components: an Arduino Due board for external control of the laser and acquisition of spectra, and a Raspberry Pi computer for the fitting. The coefficient of variation of the measurements remains under 5% in the magnetic field range of 40-200 mT, limited only by the size of the oven and translation stage used in our experiment. The proposed scheme is expected to operate with high measurement precision also for stronger magnetic fields (>500 mT) in the hyperfine Paschen-Back regime, where the evolution of atomic transitions can be calculated with high accuracy. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America