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arXiv:2207.01835

Six-wave mixing of optical and microwave fields using Rydberg excitations in thermal atomic vapor

Tanim Firdoshi, Sujit Garain, Suman Mondal, Ashok Kumar Mohapatra

Published Jul 5, 2022• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Rydberg EIT-based microwave sensing has limited microwave-to-optical conversion bandwidth due to fundamental limitation in the optical pumping rate to its dark state. We demonstrate a parametric six-wave mixing of optical probe and coupling fields driving the atoms to a Rydberg state via two-photon excitation and two microwave fields with frequency offset of $δ$ driving the Rydberg-Rydberg transition in thermal atomic vapor. Microwave-to-optical conversion bandwidth of $17$ MHz is achieved in the present experiment which is limited by the available coupling power. Further theoretical investigation of the system presents higher modulation bandwidth with larger coupling Rabi frequency.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2207.01835

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•Jan 26, 2016•0 citations
Rydberg EIT-based microwave sensing has limited microwave-to-optical conversion bandwidth due to fundamental limitation in the optical pumping rate to its dark state. We demonstrate a parametric six-wave mixing of optical probe and coupling fields driving the atoms to a Rydberg state via two-photon excitation and two microwave fields with frequency offset of δδδ driving the Rydberg-Rydberg transition in thermal atomic vapor. Microwave-to-optical conversion bandwidth of 171717 MHz is achieved in the present experiment which is limited by the available coupling power. Further theoretical investigation of the system presents higher modulation bandwidth with larger coupling Rabi frequency.
We present an experimental demonstration of converting a microwave field to an optical field via frequency mixing in a cloud of cold ^{87}Rb atoms, where the microwave field strongly couples to an electric dipole transition between Rydberg states. We show that the conversion allows the phase information of the microwave field to be coherently transferred to the optical field. With the current energy level scheme and experimental geometry, we achieve a photon-conversion efficiency of ∼0.3% at low microwave intensities and a broad conversion bandwidth of more than 4 MHz. Theoretical simulations agree well with the experimental data, and they indicate that near-unit efficiency is possible in future experiments.
We demonstrate microwave-to-optical conversion using six-wave mixing in cold 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms where the microwave field couples to two Rydberg states and propagates collinearly with the converted optical field. Our experiment is performed with a free-space microwave field, and we achieve a conversion efficiency of about 55%5 for the microwave photons entering the conversion medium. In addition, we theoretically investigate all-resonant six-wave mixing and outline a realistic experimental scheme for reaching an efficiency close to 70%.
We perform a numerical and analytical investigation of microwave-to-optical conversion based on four-wave mixing in Rydberg atoms. Our work demonstrates that both all-resonant and off-resonant frequency-mixing configurations achieve near-unit photon conversion efficiencies. We review the conditions that can lead to the presence of two possible dark states. We find that for both configurations, one of the dark states can be detrimental at high microwave powers, and show that an additional limitation to all-resonant frequency mixing is microwave-induced fluorescence. Finally, we confirm that the off-resonant configuration is more appropriate as it allows for efficient photon conversion on a wider range of input microwave intensities with reduced total power of the auxiliary fields.
In this work, we present an nS1/2→(n + 1)S1/2 two-photon excitation EIT-AT spectrum of Rydberg atom in the vapor cell. A ground state (6S1/2), a first excited state (6P3/2) and Rydberg state (69S1/2) of cesium atoms constitute a three-level system. A weak probe laser locking to the transition of 6S1/2 (F = 4)→6P3/2 (F′ = 5) couples the ground-state transition, and the strong coupling laser drives the Rydberg transition of 6P3/2→69S1/2 to yield electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect, which realizes the optical detection of Rydberg atoms. Two Rydberg 69S1/2 and 70S1/2 levels are coupled with the microwave field at a frequency of fMW = 11.735 GHz, forming a microwave two-photon spectrum. To observe the influence of microwave electric field power on two-photon spectrum, we investigate the microwave coupled Rydberg EIT-AT spectra at different microwave fields. The measurements show that the EIT-AT splitting interval is proportional to the square of the microwave electric field at strong microwave field, and indicvates a nonlinear dependence at weak microwave electric field. The theoretical calculation accords with the experimental measurement. The work here is of significance in precisely measuring the microwave electric field.
Abstract The coupling of microwave and optical systems presents an immense challenge due to the natural incompatibility of energies, but potential applications range from optical interconnects for quantum computers to next-generation quantum microwave sensors, detectors and coherent imagers. Several of the engineered platforms that have emerged are constrained by specific conditions, such as cryogenic environments, impulse protocols or narrowband fields. Here we employ Rydberg atoms that allow the wideband coupling of optical and microwave photons at room temperature with the use of a modest set-up. We present continuous-wave conversion of a 13.9 GHz field to a near-infrared optical signal using an ensemble of Rydberg atoms via a free-space six-wave mixing process designed to minimize noise interference from any nearby frequencies. The Rydberg photonic converter exhibits a conversion dynamic range of 57 dB and a wide conversion bandwidth of 16 MHz. Using photon counting, we demonstrate the readout of photons of free-space 300 K thermal background radiation at 1.59 nV cm −1 rad −1/2 s −1/2 (3.98 nV cm −1 Hz −1/2 ) with a sensitivity down to 3.8 K of noise-equivalent temperature, allowing us to observe Hanbury Brown and Twiss interference of microwave photons.
We show that cold Rydberg gases enable an efficient six-wave mixing process where microwave or terahertz fields are coherently converted into optical fields and vice versa. This process is made possible by the long lifetime of Rydberg states, the strong coupling of millimeter waves to Rydberg transitions and a quantum interference effect related to Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. We show that conversion efficiencies within an independent atom approach are of the order of 95% and analyse the impact of dipole-dipole interactions on our scheme. We find that effective conversion efficiencies in the presence of Rydberg-Rydberg interactions can still be as high as 85% based on an implementation with Rubidium atoms. Our frequency conversion scheme does not require cavities and can be implemented for a broad spectrum of terahertz and microwave fields due to the abundance of transitions within the Rydberg manifold.