American Physical Society, Physical Review A, 5(73), 2006
DOI: 10.1103/physreva.73.053404
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Recent work investigating resonant nonlinear magneto-optical rotation (NMOR) related to long-lived ($τ\ts{rel} ∼ 1 {\rm s}$) ground-state atomic coherences has demonstrated potential magnetometric sensitivities exceeding $10^{-11} {\rm G/\sqrt{Hz}}$ for small ($\lesssim 1 {\rm μ G}$) magnetic fields. In the present work, NMOR using frequency-modulated light (FM NMOR) is studied in the regime where the longitudinal magnetic field is in the geophysical range ($∼ 500 {\rm mG}$), of particular interest for many applications. In this regime a splitting of the FM NMOR resonance due to the nonlinear Zeeman effect is observed. At sufficiently high light intensities, there is also a splitting of the FM NMOR resonances due to ac Stark shifts induced by the optical field, as well as evidence of alignment-to-orientation conversion type processes. The consequences of these effects for FM-NMOR-based atomic magnetometry in the geophysical field range are considered. ; Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures