US 12,287,201 B2
Magnetometer and method for finding a magnitude of an ambient magnetic field or of one or more components thereof
Michael Stern, Givat Shmuel (IL)
Appl. No. 17/759,599
Filed by Michael Stern, Givat Shmuel (IL)
PCT Filed Jan. 19, 2021, PCT No. PCT/IB2021/050379
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Jul. 27, 2022,
PCT Pub. No. WO2021/152421, PCT Pub. Date Aug. 5, 2021.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/966,082, filed on Jan. 27, 2020.
Prior Publication US 2023/0090257 A1, Mar. 23, 2023
Int. Cl. G01C 17/32 (2006.01); G01R 33/26 (2006.01)
CPC G01C 17/32 (2013.01) [G01R 33/26 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A magnetometer that finds a magnitude of an ambient magnetic field, comprising:
a) a crystal having a diamond cubic structure, with four tetrahedral axes, with an ensemble of paramagnetic defects, some of the defects oriented along each of the crystal's four tetrahedral axes;
b) a microwave source that produces a microwave field at the crystal, of controllable frequency over a range that includes microwave resonance frequencies, in the presence of the ambient magnetic field, for paramagnetic defects oriented along all four axes;
c) a light source that illuminates the paramagnetic defects with light of a wavelength to cause fluorescent emission;
d) a light detector that measures a total detected fluorescent emission power of the paramagnetic defects; and
e) a controller configured to:
1) measure the detected fluorescent emission power at each of a plurality of different selected microwave frequencies within the range, over a spectrum acquisition time, to obtain a spectrum of the paramagnetic defect ensemble;
2) calculate a variance property of the spectrum; and
3) calculate the magnitude of the ambient magnetic field from the variance property.