Single-shot Stern-Gerlach magnetic gradiometer with an expanding cloud of cold cesium atoms

Abstract

We combine the Ramsey interferometry protocol, the Stern-Gerlach detection scheme, and the use of elongated geometry of a cloud of fully polarized cold cesium atoms to measure the selected component of the magnetic field gradient along the atomic cloud in a single shot. In contrast to the standard method where the precession of two spatially separated atomic clouds is simultaneously measured to extract their phase difference, which is proportional to the magnetic field gradient, we here demonstrate a gradiometer using a single image of an expanding atomic cloud with the phase difference imprinted along the cloud. Using resonant radio-frequency pulses and Stern-Gerlach imaging, we first demonstrate nutation and Larmor precession of atomic magnetization in an applied magnetic field. Next, we let the cold atom cloud expand in one dimension and apply the protocol for measuring the magnetic field gradient. The resolution of our single-shot gradiometer is not limited by thermal motion of atoms and has an estimated absolute accuracy below $\pm0.2$~mG/cm ($\pm20$~nT/cm).