A Fast Determination Method for Transverse Relaxation Rate of Minimized SERF Atomic Magnetometer

The sensitivity and bandwidth (BW) as the primary criteria of spin-exchange relaxation-free (SERF) atomic magnetometer (AM) are closely related to the transverse relaxation rate of atomic ensemble. In this study, we show an effective method for transverse relaxation rate measurement drawing on the golden section algorithm. With no requirement of offline fitting, the measuring time of this method is only 7 s. This is especially advantageous for reducing measurement errors due to the drifts of spatial magnetic field and light intensity and using multiple measurements to better monitor the performance of magnetometers. Moreover, the reset after measuring is optimized as the sensitive axis magnetic field correction, ensuring the integrity of measurement while improving the accuracy of magnetic compensation. Furthermore, we find that the acquired experimental data using this method can be adopted for the evaluation of magnetic field compensation performance and the monitoring of magnetic anomaly states. This determination method for transverse relaxation rate is anticipated to play a greater important role in multichannel SERF AMs' arrays.