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arXiv:2610.35315

Rydberg atomic field-enhanced feed beyond electrically small antennas

Jia-Dou Nan, Qianqian Zhang, Hao-Yu Fan, Jin-Hang Fang, Luan-Yi Wei, Bang Liu, Kai Wang, Li-Hua Zhang, Qing-Li Ma, Bo Du, Dong-Sheng Ding, Bao-Sen Shi

Published Oct 26, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The reception of electromagnetic signals becomes increasingly challenging at longer wavelengths, as conventional antenna feeds must scale with the operating wavelength, making it difficult to reconcile compactness with high sensitivity. Rydberg atoms enable direct field-to-optical conversion within deeply subwavelength sensing volumes, yet an effective receiving feed that couples incident fields into the atomic interaction volume remains underdeveloped. Here, we introduce a Rydberg atomic field-enhanced feed (RAFEF) that integrates electromagnetic field capture and enhancement with Rydberg-atomic transduction. We establish a physical model to quantify its receiving capability, Phi, that jointly accounts for sensitivity enhancement, receiving bandwidth and normalized three-dimensional volume, and experimentally obtain Phi_dB = 70.81 dB. Compared with a conventional loop-antenna feed, the RAFEF provides a higher received SNR and overall receiving capability, while its tunable narrowband response enables frequency selectivity directly at the receiving-feed stage. We further demonstrate selective recovery of a target channel from simultaneously incident signals and reception of a 93.5 MHz FM broadcast after approximately 10 km of over-the-air propagation. These results establish the RAFEF as an atomic receiving-feed architecture that exploits localized electric-field transduction to extend Rydberg-atomic reception beyond conventional electrically small antenna feeds.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2610.35315

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The reception of electromagnetic signals becomes increasingly challenging at longer wavelengths, as conventional antenna feeds must scale with the operating wavelength, making it difficult to reconcile compactness with high sensitivity. Rydberg atoms enable direct field-to-optical conversion within deeply subwavelength sensing volumes, yet an effective receiving feed that couples incident fields into the atomic interaction volume remains underdeveloped. Here, we introduce a Rydberg atomic field-enhanced feed (RAFEF) that integrates electromagnetic field capture and enhancement with Rydberg-atomic transduction. We establish a physical model to quantify its receiving capability, Phi, that jointly accounts for sensitivity enhancement, receiving bandwidth and normalized three-dimensional volume, and experimentally obtain Phi_dB = 70.81 dB. Compared with a conventional loop-antenna feed, the RAFEF provides a higher received SNR and overall receiving capability, while its tunable narrowband response enables frequency selectivity directly at the receiving-feed stage. We further demonstrate selective recovery of a target channel from simultaneously incident signals and reception of a 93.5 MHz FM broadcast after approximately 10 km of over-the-air propagation. These results establish the RAFEF as an atomic receiving-feed architecture that exploits localized electric-field transduction to extend Rydberg-atomic reception beyond conventional electrically small antenna feeds.
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Quantum sensing using Rydberg atoms offers unprecedented opportunities for next-generation radar systems, transcending classical limitations in miniaturization and spectral agility. This work proposes a quantum-enhanced radar reception architecture that replaces conventional antenna-tomixer chains with a centimeter-scale vapor cell as a quantum radio frequency (RF) field sensor and mixer, enabling this paradigm for radar sensing. This approach is based on electromagnetically induced transparency, which uses Autler-Townes splitting to enable direct RF-to-optical downconversion within the atomic medium via an external co-frequency reference. To circumvent the range-resolution limitation imposed by the narrow instantaneous response of the atomic receiver, we adopt a stepped-frequency synthesis strategy involving the hybrid manipulation of Rydberg energy states. This strategy combines coarse laser frequency tuning with fine AC-Stark shift compensation. Additionally, we establish a nonlinear response model of the Rydberg atomic homodyne receiver and propose a customized nonlinear compensation method that extends the linear dynamic range by over 7 dB. We developed a compressive sensing-based algorithm (CS-Rydberg) to suppress noise and mitigate the undersampling problem. Experimentally, we demonstrate a compact prototype that achieves centimeter-level ranging precision (RMSE = 1.06 cm) within 1.6–1.9 m. By synthesizing a 1-GHz equivalent bandwidth via sparse stepped-frequency sampling over 2.6–3.6 GHz, we observe resolvable target separations down to 15 cm under controlled sparse scenarios. These results validate the feasibility of quantum sensing based on Rydberg atomic receivers and underscore the architecture’s scalability. By harnessing the atoms’ ultrabroad spectral response, the synthesized bandwidth can extend well beyond the current range. This enables sub-centimeter resolution in future radar systems while preserving quantum traceable calibration and a highly simplified front end.
We use a quantum sensor based on thermal Rydberg atoms to receive data encoded in electromagnetic fields in the extreme electrically small regime, with a sensing volume over 10^{7} times smaller than the cube of the electric field wavelength. We introduce the standard quantum limit for data capacity, and experimentally observe quantum-limited data reception for bandwidths from 10 kHz up to 30 MHz. In doing this, we provide a useful alternative to classical communication antennas, which become increasingly ineffective when the size of the antenna is significantly smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic field.
We present enhanced sensing of a radio frequency (RF) electric field (E-field) by the combined polarizability of Rydberg atoms and the optimized local oscillator (LO) field of a superheterodyne receiver. Our modified theoretical model reveals the dependencies of the sensitivity of E-field amplitude measurement on the polarizability of Rydberg states and the strength of the LO field. The enhanced sensitivities of the megahertz (MHz) E-field are demonstrated at the optimal LO field for three different Rydberg states 43D5/2{\rm 43D}_{5/2}43D5/2​, 60S1/2{\rm 60S}_{1/2}60S1/2​, and 90S1/2{\rm 90S}_{1/2}90S1/2​. The sensitivity of 63 MHz for the 90S1/2{\rm 90S}_{1/2}90S1/2​ state reaches 9.6 ×10−5 V/m/Hz\times 10^{-5}\rm \,V/m/\sqrt {Hz}×10−5V/m/Hz​, which is approximately an order of magnitude higher than those already published. This result closely approaches the sensitivity limit of a 1 cm passive dipole antenna without using an impedance matching network. This atomic sensor based on the Rydberg Stark effect with heterodyne technique is expected to boost an alternative solution to electric dipole antennas.