Atomic magnetometers and their fundamental applications

Atomic magnetometers measure the interactions energy between atomic magnetic moments and the magnetic field In addition to their direct applications for measuring of very small magnetic fields atomic magnetometers are also used to search for new physics effects that couple to magnetic moment or atomic spin In these applications it is usually necessary to construct a co magnetometer utilizing two different atomic species to cancel the effects of ordinary magnetic fields I will describe several experiments that we performed using a co magnetometer consisting of electron spins in an alkali metal and nuclear spins in a noble gas to search for effects of Lorentz violation and for new spin dependent forces The co magnetometer is also a sensitive gyroscope so the most recent measurements were performed at the South Pole to eliminate the background signal from Earth s rotation I will also describe our recent work on a new co magnetometer using two nuclear spin species to achieve better long term frequency stability and enable new fundamental physics measurements Refreshments are served at 3:20pm