A saturation-absorption rubidium magnetometer with multilevel optical Bloch-equation modeling for intermediate-to-high fields

preprint2026arXivOpen access

Abstract

We present SASHMAG (Saturated Absorption Spectroscopy High-field MAGnetometer), an atomic sensor designed for precision magnetic-field measurements in the intermediate-to-high field regime (>0.2 T>0.2\,\text{T}) using Rubidium-87 (87Rb^{87}Rb). The sensor operates in the hyperfine Paschen-Back regime, where the hyperfine and Zeeman interactions decouple, and utilizes counter-propagating pump-probe configuration in Faraday geometry to resolve isolated, Doppler-free Zeeman transitions. To interpret the resulting spectra in this strongly field-dependent regime, we developed a comprehensive multilevel optical Bloch-equation model solved explicitly in the uncoupled ∣mI,mJ⟩\ket{m_I, m_J} basis, capturing state mixing and nonlinear saturation dynamics. This model reproduces measured spectra at sub-Doppler resolution and is consistent with analytical expectations for power broadening and thermal Doppler scaling. Magnetic field estimation is performed using a physics-constrained optimization routine that infers the magnetic field by minimizing the residual between experimentally extracted line centers and calculated transition frequencies from the field-dependent Hamiltonian. We demonstrate magnetic field retrieval from 0.2 T0.2\,\text{T} to 0.4 T0.4\,\text{T} with a precision of ±0.0017 T\pm 0.0017 \,\text{T}). Furthermore, the validated simulation establishes a foundation for generating synthetic training datasets, paving the way for autonomous, Machine Learning-enhanced magnetometry in applications ranging from MRI to fusion reactors.

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