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Applied Optics

Enhanced microwave metrology using an optical grating in Rydberg atoms

Shengfang Zhao, Yin Zheng, Song Xiaoyun, Zhengmao Jia, Leqiu Wang, Bing Chen, Qingtian Zeng, Yandong Peng

Published Apr 13, 2023• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An enhanced measurement of the microwave (MW) electric (E) field is proposed using an optical grating in Rydberg atoms. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) of Rydberg atoms appears driven by a probe field and a control field. The EIT transmission spectrum is modulated by an optical grating. When a MW field drives the Rydberg transition, the central principal maximum of the grating spectrum splits. It is interesting to find that the magnitude of the sharp grating spectrum changes linearly with the MW E-field strength, which can be used to measure the MW E-field. The simulation result shows that the minimum detectable E-field strength is nearly 1/8 of that without gratings, and its measurement accuracy could be enhanced by about 60 times. Other discussion of MW metrology based on a grating spectrum is also presented.

DOI
10.1364/ao.486619

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An enhanced measurement of the microwave (MW) electric (E) field is proposed using an optical grating in Rydberg atoms. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) of Rydberg atoms appears driven by a probe field and a control field. The EIT transmission spectrum is modulated by an optical grating. When a MW field drives the Rydberg transition, the central principal maximum of the grating spectrum splits. It is interesting to find that the magnitude of the sharp grating spectrum changes linearly with the MW E-field strength, which can be used to measure the MW E-field. The simulation result shows that the minimum detectable E-field strength is nearly 1/8 of that without gratings, and its measurement accuracy could be enhanced by about 60 times. Other discussion of MW metrology based on a grating spectrum is also presented.
Abstract A scheme for measuring microwave (MW) electric (E) fields is proposed based on bichromatic electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in Rydberg atoms. A bichromatic control field drives the excited state transition, whose absorption shows three EIT windows. When a MW field drives the Rydberg transition, the EIT windows split and six transmission peaks appear. It is interesting to find that the peak-to-peak distance of transmission spectrum is sensitive to the MW field strength, which can be used to measure MW E-field. Simulation results show that the measurement accuracy could be increased by about 4 times, and the minimum detectable strength of the MW E-field may be improved by about 3 times compared with the common EIT scheme. After the Doppler averaging, the minimum detectable MW E-field strength is about 5 times larger than that without Doppler effect. Also, we investigate other effects on the sensitivity of the system.
An enhanced measurement of the microwave electric (MW E) field by using intracavity Rydberg atoms is proposed. Based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), the intracavity atomic system exhibits two EIT windows, resulting in two narrow peaks in the cavity transmission. The peak-to-peak distance is sensitive to MW fields and can be used to probe MW E-field strength. Simulation results show that the detectable minimum strength of the MW fields is nearly eight times smaller than that without a cavity. Due to cavity coupling, the transmission spectrum is greatly narrowed, which improves the measurement resolution substantially. The numerical results show that the spectrum resolution is increased by more than 20 times. Furthermore, the cavity-enhanced measurement scheme seems to be robust against the changes in the control field strength and shows a broadband tunability.
A scheme for the measurement of a microwave (MW) electric field is proposed via multi-photon coherence in Rydberg atoms. It is based on the three-photon electromagnetically induced absorption (TPEIA) spectrum. In this process, the multi-photon produces a narrow absorption peak, which has a larger magnitude than the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) peak under the same conditions. The TPEIA peak is sensitive to MW fields, and can be used to measure MW electric field strength. We found that the magnitude of TPEIA peaks shows a linear relationship with the MW field strength. The simulation results show that the minimum detectable strength of the MW fields is about 1/10 of that based on an common EIT effect, and the probe sensitivity could be improved by about four times. Furthermore, the MW sensing based on three-photon coherence seems to be robust against the changes in the control field and shows a broad tunability, and the scheme may be useful for designing novel MW sensing devices.
A theoretical scheme for precise measurement of microwave (MW) electric fields is proposed using a structured control field in Rydberg atoms. We use a Bessel-Gauss (BG) beam to drive the excited-state transition, its spatial structure characteristics result in a narrow linewidth of probe transmission, which benefits MW electric field measurement. It is interesting that the spectral linewidth could be further narrowed by increasing the azimuthal index. The minimum detectability of the MW field is about one-tenth of the common electromagnetically induced transparency scheme, and the spectrum resolution could be improved by about 40 times from simulation. Moreover, the system has good robustness.
A scheme of grating-assisted full-field (0°–180°) microwave (MW) polarization measurement is theoretically proposed using a Rydberg-atom mixer via electromagnetically induced transparency in the absence of a magnetic field. The probe spectrum reads out the mixed MW signal and is modulated by an optical grating. It is found that the multi-slit interference leads to the enhancement of the grating spectrum, which substantially enhances the distinguishability of MW polarization. The simulation result shows that the minimum resolvable polarization angle is about 0.04°, and the ratio of bandwidth-angle resolution is introduced to improve polarization measurement. Moreover, the MW field strength and the phase difference between local and signal MW fields could affect the symmetry of the grating spectrum, which helps to determine the polarization angles of the MW field from 0° to 180° without the aid of magnetic fields.
A scheme for enhancing the measurement of microwave electric (MW E) fields based on a cavity-quantum-electrodynamics (CQED) system consisting of an optical resonator coupled with four-level cold Rydberg atoms is analyzed in the paper. The strong collective coupling of the CQED cavity compresses the linewidth of the electromagnetically induced transparency signal substantially, which can be used to enhance the measurement. Our simulation results show that the minimum detectable strength of MW E-field can be enhanced by 196.7 and 26.2 times smaller than the separate atomic medium scheme and the weak coupling scheme, respectively. The detectable minimum strength in the present work can reach as low as 396.5nVcm −1 . In addition, compared with the other two schemes, our work can increase the spectrum resolution respectively by about 216 and 10 times. The proposed scheme shows a broadband tunability and can be used in a broad detection range.