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It looks like the sensitivities of magnetometers and gravimeters are usually reported with the units of $\text{Tesla}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ and $\text{Gal}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$, respectively (where "Gal" is a unit of acceleration).

Why is there the strange division by $\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$? I can't find an actual definition of the sensitivity of these sensors anywhere, so I don't know how to interpret those units.

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These figures represent the root mean square background measurement noise per unit bandwidth, in other words if you had an ideal bandpass filter placed after the instrument whose bandwidth is B [Hz] around some frequency at which those specified figures are given, say, $\sigma [T/\sqrt {Hz}]$ then the output will have some additive fluctuation whose standard deviation is $\sigma \sqrt{B}$

If your $\sigma$ is frequency varying, which is a common occurrence for no other reasons than that all instruments have $1/f$ noise, and you characterize the measuring instrument before it is sampled by a linear transfer function $H(f)$ normalized so that its peak is $max|H|=1$ then the total mean square fluctuation is $$\sigma_M^2 = \int_0^\infty \sigma^2 (f) |H(f)|df$$

This $\sigma_M$ is then the rms fluctuation created by the instrument itself and is added to the actual measured sample. (Here we, of course, assume tacitly that the instrument noise is additive and Gaussian, as is indeed case usually.)

The equation for $\sigma_M$ is dimensionally consistent because if $\sigma (f)$ is measured in $[T/\sqrt{Hz}]$ then $\sigma^2(f)$ is measured in $[T^2/Hz]$, $H$ is dimensionless for it is normalized to $1$, so the dimension of $\sigma_M$ is then $[T]$ as it should be.

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  • $\begingroup$ That makes sense for AC sensors, but aren't gravimeters and magnetometers usually used to measure static fields? So why is there a bandwidth? $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 13, 2021 at 18:40
  • $\begingroup$ That is true but there are two issues here. (1) as an easier example take a look at the phase noise of an oscillator. The oscillator is at "some" frequency and the phase noise we are interested in is surrounding that. We are always interested in the phase noise of the surrounding because that is where information usually lies. (2) there is no such a thing as "dc", everything fluctuates even the "constant" field does, and that motion is not "dc". Instruments drift too, so the really sophisticated ones do chop and thereby move the information to a carrier frequency. $\endgroup$
    – hyportnex
    Commented Apr 13, 2021 at 19:03
  • $\begingroup$ "bandwidth" is not related to the carrier frequency (chop rate) except it has to be much smaller so the noise spectrum in it is flat. Then as you change the center frequency of the filter you can map the spectrum of the noise, this is spectrum analysis. $\endgroup$
    – hyportnex
    Commented Apr 13, 2021 at 19:05
  • $\begingroup$ Okay, but a real sensor doesn't have an ideal bandpass filter in front of it. If I were to give you a gravimeter and tell you that its sensitivity is 1 g/Hz^(1/2), then how would you translate that figure into an actual uncertainty in the gravitational field itself? $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 14, 2021 at 0:50
  • $\begingroup$ even if measured at dc there is a low-pass filtering effect before turning it into a digital sample, or measured by a galvanometer (analog) and the needle fluctuates, etc.,. The total effective noise bandwidth of that effective low-pass filter is then $B$. $\endgroup$
    – hyportnex
    Commented Apr 14, 2021 at 12:52

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