Rubidium vapors in high magnetic fields

Optical spectroscopy of simple atoms allows a very precise measurement of the atomic properties and of the external perturbations, as applied magnetic or electric fields. The Zeeman spectrum represents a magnetic field fingerprint. In this work we present our investigations about rubidium response to high magnetic fields in order to use it as magnetic field probe in the range 0.1 T - 60 T. This work was carried out in the framework of the RUHMA (RUbidium Atoms in High MAgnetic fields) project. Our investigation opens the path to magnetic field optical metrology, converting a magnetic field measurement into an optical frequency determination. The principle of the experiment is to compare experimental atomic spectra with computed theoretical spectra, in order to extract the value of the magnetic field strength. We performed our preliminary tests in static magnetic fields, ranging from 0.06 T to 0.2 T. In this framework we investigated in details some complex spectroscopic structures due to the multi-level nature of the atomic system. After this preliminary phase, the 1T-60T range have been investigated using the pulsed magnets of the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses in Toulouse. We carried out an effort of miniaturization of the experimental setup in order to satisfy the constraints imposed by high magnetic field experiments. We performed metrology of pulsed magnetic field up to 58 T, which is the highest field an atomic gas has never been exposed. The accuracy of our method attained the level of 10-4.