All-optical measurement of magnetic fields for quantum gas experiments

We present an all-optical method to measure and compensate for residual magnetic fields present in a cloud of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical dipole trap. Our approach leverages the increased loss from the trapped atomic sample through electromagnetically induced absorption. Modulating the excitation laser provides coherent sidebands, resulting in a Λ-type pump-probe scheme. Scanning an additional magnetic offset field leads to pairs of sub-natural linewidth resonances, whose positions encode the magnetic field in all three spatial directions. Our measurement scheme is readily implemented in typical quantum gas experiments and has no particular hardware requirements.