Adventures in Alignment-Based Magnetometry

Alkali-vapor magnetometers constitute the world's most precise magnetic sensors to date. Typically such devices employ circularly polarized light and thus rely upon orientation, the lowest-order polarization moment which can be excited in an alkali atom. The use of atomic alignment, imparted by linearly polarized light, can offer advantages over orientation-based magnetometry due to the higher-order symmetry of the aligned state. Here we discuss developments in alignment-based magnetometry, with particular focus on the issues of systematic errors such as heading error. Such errors will also be addressed in the context of a self-oscillating magnetometer, along with the prospect of completely remote magnetometry performed over a large free-space distance.