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Optics Express

Gain measurement of microwave antenna with heterodyne bichromatic excitation in Rydberg atoms

Shan Ge, Guanyu Ren, Wengeng Wang, Yu You, Zhengmao Jia, Bing Chen, Alec Maassen van den Brink, Yandong Peng

Published May 13, 2024• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a scheme for gain measurement of microwave (MW) antenna with heterodyne bichromatic excitation in Rydberg atoms via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The Rydberg-EIT atoms serve as a frequency mixer with a strong locally oscillating MW field and a weak signal field. A large dispersion appears in the EIT windows due to the interference of two sub-EIT systems, which much narrows the transmission spectrum. The locally oscillating MW field could enhance the atomic response to the weak MW signals. The simulation results show that the gain measurement of MW antenna remains good accuracy even for weak MW fields and the minimum detectable MW field strength is about 1/12 of that of common EIT scheme. Other influences on the gain measurement are also investigated.

DOI
10.1364/oe.523171

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arXiv:2111.06582•Nov 12, 2021•1 citation
We propose a scheme for gain measurement of microwave (MW) antenna with heterodyne bichromatic excitation in Rydberg atoms via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The Rydberg-EIT atoms serve as a frequency mixer with a strong locally oscillating MW field and a weak signal field. A large dispersion appears in the EIT windows due to the interference of two sub-EIT systems, which much narrows the transmission spectrum. The locally oscillating MW field could enhance the atomic response to the weak MW signals. The simulation results show that the gain measurement of MW antenna remains good accuracy even for weak MW fields and the minimum detectable MW field strength is about 1/12 of that of common EIT scheme. Other influences on the gain measurement are also investigated.
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.
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.
An active-Raman-gain (ARG) spectrum of Rydberg atoms is investigated and proposed to measure a microwave (MW) electric (E) field. A strong Raman field couples the ground-state transition with large frequency detuning, and a probe field drives the metastable transition, whose transmission shows a large gain. When a MW field couples the Rydberg transition, the gain peak splits. It is interesting to find that the frequency splitting of gain peaks shows a linear relationship with the MW-field strength, which can be used to measure the MW E field. Moreover, the ARG spectrum has a large peak value that is about 10 times larger than that of common electromagnetically induced transparency schemes. For weak MW fields, the Doppler effect will greatly narrow the gain spectrum if the probe and Raman fields copropagate through the atomic cell, which increases the probe sensitivity dramatically. After the Doppler averaging, the probe sensitivity is enhanced by about 10 times, and the linewidth is narrowed to 1/10 compared to the case without the Doppler effect.
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.
A highly excited Rydberg atom via electromagnetically induced transparency with two color cascading lasers has extreme sensitivity to electric fields of microwave ranging from 100 MHz to over 1 THz. It can be used as susceptible atom-based microwave communication antennas where the carrier wave usually works exactly resonant to the transition between a pair of adjacent Rydberg states with large electric dipole moment. A technique of superheterodyne with a strong on-resonant local microwave oscillator is employed to induce considerable Autler-Townes splitting where the antennas has a highest dynamic response to another weak target signal microwave carrier. To further improve the sensitivity of atomic antenna in communication, we detune the carrier microwave frequency off resonance forming an asymmetrically optical splitting and fix the coupling laser frequency at the shoulder of the stronger one, and optimize the local field strength simultaneously. It gives a sensitivity of 12.50(04) nVcm−1⋅Hz−1/2\rm{nVcm^{-1}\cdot Hz^{-1/2}}nVcm−1⋅Hz−1/2. Its enhancement mechanism of sensitivity is also proved by a theoretical simulation.