Field Sensors with Exceptional Energy Resolution

Introduction

Field-SEER will develop magnetic sensors with combined spatial, temporal, and field resolution beyond what is possible with existing sensing approaches. The “energy resolution” of a sensor describes this combined performance and determines a sensor’s ability to detect weak, localized, and transient signals.

Current Limitations

In today’s best-developed sensors, the energy resolution is known to be limited by a combination of intrinsic quantum noise and self-interaction effects. Field-SEER will develop sensors that evade such limits, establishing a new paradigm for extreme field sensing.

Applications

The immediate fruits of this new approach will be sensors for two exceptionally demanding contemporary applications:

1. A spinor Bose-Einstein condensate co-magnetometer will be developed to search for short-range forces predicted by several models of physics beyond the standard model.
2. Optically-addressed nuclear spin ensembles will be developed as high-density vapor-phase magnetometers for next-generation magnetic brain imaging.

In both cases, orders-of-magnitude improvements are predicted for both the energy resolution and application-specific metrics.

Spin Squeezing

Field-SEER will also study how spin squeezing, predicted to play an important role in these sensors due to their extraordinary coherence properties, can be harnessed for optimal sensing in this new regime of exceptional energy resolution.