We report on the Earth's rotation measurement using a K-Rb-${}^{21}\mathrm{Ne}$ comagnetometer. The steady-state responses of the nuclear- and electronic-spin polarizations therein have been shown. The light shift arising from the circularly polarized pump laser beam enables the comagnetometer to sense dual-axis rotations. This feasibility has been emphasized and verified by numerical simulation. We believe that this sensor could be used in any application requiring compact size, low cost, and high-precision inertial navigation.

We describe a dual-axis atomic spin gyroscope based on an alkali metal-noble gas comagnetometer. Alkali metal vapor is optically pumped, and then the noble gas is hyperpolarized along the z axis. When sensing a transverse rotation, the polarized noble gas will be induced to precess and produce an effective magnetic field in the x – y plane for alkali metals to precess under. Operating in the spin-exchange relaxation-free regime, alkali atoms are modulated by the z axis magnetic field and serve as an integrated in-situ dual-axis magnetometer to detect the gyroscopic precession in the x and y axes simultaneously, using a single probe beam. By using the parametric modulation technique, the low frequency drift is effectively suppressed and a bias instability of less than 0.05 deg/h has been achieved in our dual-axis atomic spin gyroscope.

In a hybrid pumping alkali-metal vapor cell filled with both K and Rb atoms, the K atom spins are optically pumped by the laser and the Rb atom spins are polarized by the K spins through spin exchange. We discovered that the ac Stark shift of the Rb atom spins, caused by the far-off-resonant pumping laser tuned to the K absorption lines, was mixed together with the ac Stark shift of the K atom spins through fast spin exchange. This mixing is studied and we demonstrate a K-Rb-${}^{21}\mathrm{Ne}$ comagnetometer in which the ac Stark shift of the Rb atom spins is eliminated by compensating for the Rb ac Stark shift with the K ac Stark shift. An ac Stark shift elimination method has been developed.

The fluctuations of the probe light intensity seriously affect the performance of the sensitive atomic magnetometer. Here we propose a novel method for the intensity stabilization based on the second harmonic component of the photoelastic modulator (PEM) detection in the atomic magnetometer. The method not only could be used to eliminate the intensity fluctuations of the laser source, but also remove the fluctuations from the optical components caused by the environment. A relative fluctuation of the light intensity of 0.035% was achieved and the corresponding fluctuation of the output signal of the atomic magnetometer has decreased about two orders of magnitude from 4.06% to 0.041%. As the scheme proposed here only contains optical devices and does not require additional feedback controlled equipments, it is especially suitable for the integration of the atomic magnetometer.

We investigate the real-time closed-loop control of the compensation point in a $\mathrm{K}\text{−}\mathrm{Rb}{\text{−}}^{21}\mathrm{Ne}$ comagnetometer operated in the spin-exchange relaxation-free regime. By locking the electron resonance, the alkali-metal electrons are free from the fluctuations of the longitudinal ambient magnetic field and nuclear magnetization, which could improve the systematic stability, enlarge the linear measuring range, and suppress the cross-talk error of the comagnetometer. The demonstration of closed-loop control of the magnetic field in the single nuclear species comagnetometer is of great significance for rotation sensing such as in gyroscopes and other high-precision metrology applications of the comagnetometer.

We investigate the effects of pump laser power density on the hybrid optically pumped comagnetometer operated in the spin-exchange relaxation-free (SERF) regime. The analytic steady-state output model for the comagnetometer considering two alkali metal species and one nuclear species is presented for the first time. And the effects of pump laser power density on the rotation sensitivity, suppression of low-frequency magnetic noise and long-term stability of the comagnetometer are studied experimentally. The results indicate that when the product of pumping rate and density ratio of pumped atom to probed atom is equal to the spin relaxation rate of the probed atom, the maximum response and highest sensitivity of the comagnetometer are achieved. However, the suppression of low-frequency magnetic noise and long-term stability improve with the increasing of pump laser power density due to the increasing of nuclear spin polarization. Our focus is to optimize the performance of the comagnetometer for rotation sensing, but the theory and method presented here are relevant to all applications of the hybrid optical pumping technique.