Sensitivity of double-resonance alignment magnetometers

We present an experimental study of the intrinsic magnetometric sensitivity of an optical or rf-frequency double-resonance magnetometer in which <i>linearly</i> polarized laser light is used in the optical pumping and detection processes. We show that a semiempirical model of the magnetometer can be used to describe the magnetic resonance spectra. Then, we present an efficient method to predict the optimum operating point of the magnetometer, i.e., the light power and rf Rabi frequency providing maximum magnetometric sensitivity. Finally, we apply the method to investigate the evolution of the optimum operating point with temperature. The method is very efficient to determine relaxation rates and thus allowed us to determine the three collisional disalignment cross sections for the components of the alignment tensor. Both first and second harmonic signals from the magnetometer are considered and compared.