New classes of systematic effects in gas spin co-magnetometers

Atomic co-magnetometers are widely used in precision measurements searching for spin interactions beyond the Standard Model. We describe a new $^3$He-$^{129}$Xe co-magnetometer probed by Rb atoms and use it to identify two general classes of systematic effects in gas co-magnetometers, one associated with diffusion in second-order magnetic field gradients and another due to temperature gradients. We also develop a general and practical approach for calculating spin relaxation and frequency shifts due to arbitrary magnetic field gradients and confirm it experimentally.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

High-Temperature Alkali Vapor Cells with Anti-Relaxation Surface Coatings

Antirelaxation surface coatings allow long spin relaxation times in alkali-metal cells without buffer gas, enabling faster diffusion of the alkali atoms throughout the cell and giving larger signals due to narrower optical linewidths. Effective coatings were previously unavailable for operation at temperatures above 80 C. We demonstrate that octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) can allow potassium or rubidium atoms to experience hundreds of collisions with the cell surface before depolarizing, and that an OTS coating remains effective up to about 170 C for both potassium and rubidium. We consider the experimental concerns of operating without buffer gas and with minimal quenching gas at high vapor density, studying the stricter need for effective quenching of excited atoms and deriving the optical rotation signal shape for atoms with resolved hyperfine structure in the spin-temperature regime. As an example of a high-temperature application of antirelaxation coated alkali vapor cells, we operate a spin-exchange relaxation-free atomic magnetometer with sensitivity of 6 fT/sqrt(Hz) and magnetic linewidth as narrow as 2 Hz.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. The following article appeared in Journal of Applied Physics and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?jap/106/11490

Improved Limits on Spin-Mass Interactions

Very light particles with CP-violating couplings to ordinary matter, such as axions or axion-like particles, can mediate long-range forces between polarized and unpolarized fermions. We describe a new experimental search for such forces between unpolarized nucleons in two 250 kg Pb weights and polarized neutrons and electrons in a $^3$He-K co-magnetometer located about 15 cm away. We place improved constrains on the products of scalar and pseudoscalar coupling constants, $g^n_p g^N_s < 4.2\times10^{-30}$ and $g^e_p g^N_s < 1.7\times10^{-30}$ (95% CL) for axion-like particle masses less than $10^{-6}$ eV, which represents an order of magnitude improvement over the best previous neutron laboratory limit

Calculation of Magnetic Field Noise from High-Permeability Magnetic Shields and Conducting Objects with Simple Geometry

High-permeability magnetic shields generate magnetic field noise that can limit the sensitivity of modern precision measurements. We show that calculations based on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem allow quantitative evaluation of magnetic field noise, either from current or magnetization fluctuations, inside enclosures made of high-permeability materials. Explicit analytical formulas for the noise are derived for a few axially symmetric geometries, which are compared with results of numerical finite element analysis. Comparison is made between noises caused by current and magnetization fluctuations inside a high-permeability shield and also between current-fluctuation-induced noises inside magnetic and non-magnetic conducting shells. A simple model is suggested to predict power-law decay of noise spectra beyond quasi-static regime. Our results can be used to assess noise from existing shields and to guide design of new shields for precision measurements.Comment: 10 page

U.S. Imports, Exports, and Tariff Data, 1989-2001

This paper describes the updating of the NBER trade dataset, which now provides U.S. import and export values to the year 2001, disaggregated by Harmonized System (HS), Standard International Trade Classification (SITC), and the U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) categories. In addition, U.S. tariff data at the HS level have been added for the years 1989-2001. Earlier CD-ROMs distributed by the NBER described data on U.S. imports and exports from 1972-1994, and these values have been slightly modified for 1989-1994 and then updated to 2001. Together with the earlier data, there are now 30 years of disaggregate U.S. trade data available to researchers. These data, along with the tariff information for 1989-2001, are all available over the internet at www.nber.org/data/.

Electric Dipole Moments as Probes of CPT Invariance

Electric dipole moments (EDMs) of elementary particles and atoms probe violations of T and P symmetries and consequently of CP if CPT is an exact symmetry. We point out that EDMs can also serve as sensitive probes of CPT-odd, CP-even interactions, that are not constrained by any other existing experiments. Analyzing models with spontaneously broken Lorentz invariance, we calculate EDMs in terms of the leading CPT-odd operators to show that experimental sensitivity probes the scale of CPT breaking as high as 10^{12}GeV.Comment: 4 pages, typos correcte

Isotropic magnetometry with simultaneous excitation of orientation and alignment CPT resonances

Atomic magnetometers have very high absolute precision and sensitivity to magnetic fields but suffer from a fundamental problem: the vectorial or tensorial interaction of light with atoms leads to "dead zones", certain orientations of magnetic field where the magnetometer loses its sensitivity. We demonstrate a simple polarization modulation scheme that simultaneously creates coherent population trapping (CPT) in orientation and alignment, thereby eliminating dead zones. Using $^{87}$Rb in a 10 Torr buffer gas cell we measure narrow, high-contrast CPT transparency peaks in all orientations and also show absence of systematic effects associated with non-linear Zeeman splitting.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure