Optical Pumping and Optical Detection Involving Microwave and Radio Frequency Coherence Effects.

Arnold L. Bloom, William E. Bell

Shuqin Liu, DONG TAI-QIAN, 北京大学

In the optical pumping experiment for 87Rb gas cell, when the microwave and radio frequency wave are applied simultaneously, the optically detected resonance signals of microwave-radio frequency wave multi-quantum transition are observed.

Fabian Ripka, Chang Lui, Matthias Schmidt +2 more

Hyperfine effects in Rydberg atom-based sensing have been observed for sensing polarization. However, in most work to date, the hyperfine structure involved in the radio frequency transition has been ignored because the residual Doppler widths realized in experiments are larger than the hyperfine energy splittings of the Rydberg states. Recently, we have proposed and demonstrated a collinear three photon scheme for Rydberg atom-based electrometry that has a greatly reduced residual Doppler width, < 500 kHz. In these experiments, we observe the effect of optical pumping and the hyperfine structure of the Rydberg states. We compare the 42P3/2 → 41D5/2 and 42P3/2 → 41D3/2 sensing transitions to show that Rydberg atom hyperfine structure effects can be observed at our spectral resolution. Hyperfine structure and optical pumping can alter the effective transition dipole moments on the sensing transition and can be used to detect polarization of the radio frequency field so our work is important for practical Rydberg atom electric field sensing.

Claude N. Cohen-Tannoudji

ADRIANO DI GIACOMO, F. Feo

Du Zhi-jing, Shougang Zhang, Jie Liu +3 more

In this paper we report a laboratory prototype of pulsed optically pumped (POP) rubidium frequency standard. In POP operation the pumping, interrogation, and detection phases are separated in time, avoiding the coupling between microwave and optical coherence. The POP87Rb vapor-cell frequency standard was studied experimentally based on the detection of free induction microwave signal or optical absorption signal. Ramsey fringes were obtained based on87Rb in buffer gas, with FWHM of 65Hz and 150Hz for microwave and optical central Ramsey fringes respectively. The atomic quality factor was on the order of 108. With microwave detection, the achieved frequency stability was 1.2×10-12τ-1/2(τ=1~100s).