Accurate measurement of the residual field in a magnetic shield using optically pumped 133Cs atoms

Determining the residual field in a magnetic shield is essential in quantum measurement. However, it faces some problems which limit the measuring accuracy. In order to overcome the main problems for the measuring method based on magnetic resonance, a method which detects the electron paramagnetic resonance frequency of 133Cs atoms is reported. By using a rotating exciting magnetic field and choosing appropriate frequency of probe light, the influences of the Bloch-Siegert effect on the measurement of the residual field is eliminated, and by extracting the sums of the residual field and the fictitious field caused by light shifts under different pump light powers and using a second-degree polynomial fitting, the influences of light shifts on the measurement of the residual field is eliminated, thus the residual field is obtained accurately. The test results demonstrate that a high measuring accuracy of 0.01 nT can be achieved for this method.