We continuously observe dynamical decoupling in a spin-1 quantum gas using a
weak optical measurement of spin precession. Continuous dynamical decoupling
aims to dramatically modify the character and energy spectrum of spin states to
render them insensitive to parasitic fluctuations. Continuous observation
measures this new spectrum in a single-preparation of the quantum gas. The
measured time-series contains seven tones, which spectrogram analysis parses as
splittings, coherences, and coupling strengths between the decoupled states in
real-time. With this we locate a regime where a transition between two states
is decoupled from magnetic field instabilities up to fourth order,
complementary to the parallel work at higher fields by Trypogeorgos et al.
(arXiv:1706.07876). The decoupled microscale quantum gas offers magnetic
sensitivity in a tunable band, persistent over many milliseconds: the length
scales, frequencies, and durations relevant to many applications, including
sensing biomagnetic phenomena such as neural spike trains.Comment: 5+ pages, 4 figures, 1 table; revised citation of Trypogeorgos et al.
(2017
