A three-axis atomic magnetometer for nuclear magnetic resonance gyroscopes (NMRGs) is demonstrated. To satisfy the miniaturization demand of NMRGs, a magnetic-resonance-based atomic magnetometer is used to detect the longitudinal magnetic field. Simultaneously, the longitudinal field is modulated to measure the magnetic field in x and y axes based on a nonlinear magneto-optical rotation magnetometer. Magnetic field sensitivities of 100 fT/Hz1/2 in x and y axes and 20 fT/Hz1/2 in the z axis are achieved. The bandwidths of this magnetometer are 96 Hz in x and y axes and 6 Hz in the z axis. A high-sensitivity three-axis magnetometer is essential to accomplish the rotation detection in NMRGs and also plays a vital role in optimizing the performance of gyroscopes.

We report on the realization of modulation transfer spectroscopy on the D 2 transition of 133 Cs for frequency stabilization of the 852 nm distributed Bragg reflector diode lasers. Proper modulation frequency, optimal pump and probe beam power are investigated according to the peak-to-peak amplitude and the slope of the modulation transfer spectroscopy signals.The laser frequency can be locked robustly for more than one day. The beat signal between two independent lasers has a frequency drift of 716 kHz at 5000 s. The result shows that the fractional frequency instability of the locked laser falls below 5 × 10 −11 at 1000 s averaging time.

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The polarization of light affected by the birefringence of optical elements, such as vapor cell walls, mirrors, and windows, may introduce systematic errors that can be minimized by precisely measuring and correcting the light polarization with a highly sensitive atomic polarimeter. In high precision measurements, it is necessary to measure the light polarization with a high precision where the light interacts with atoms. However, it is inconvenient or even impossible to use the presented method to measure the light polarization, for example, in a cell or cavity. We present a precise and relatively straightforward method to measure the light polarization based on a cesium (Cs) atomic magnetometer configuration. The pump-probe scheme is involved in our experiment. The pump light polarizes atomic spins and the probe light measures the spins polarization. The optical rotation of the probe light significantly depends on the pump light ellipticity, which can be used to measure the light polarization with a high precision. In our work, we present a method to measure the pump light ellipticity with a sensitivity of 2.1 × 10 −8 rad Hz −1/2 for linearly polarized light, which has approximately an order of magnitude improvement than previous research results.