Assessment of Rydberg atoms for wideband electric field sensing

Abstract

Rydberg atoms have attracted significant interest recently as electric field sensors. In order to assess potential applications, detailed understanding of relevant figures of merit is necessary, particularly in relation to other, more mature, sensor technologies. Here we present a quantitative analysis of the Rydberg sensor's sensitivity to oscillating electric fields with frequencies between 1 kHz and 1 THz. Sensitivity is calculated using a combination of analytical and semi-classical Floquet models. Using these models, optimal sensitivity at arbitrary field frequency is determined. We validate the numeric Floquet model via experimental Rydberg sensor measurements over a range of 1-20 GHz. Using analytical models, we compare with two prominent electric field sensor technologies: electro-optic crystals and dipole antenna-coupled passive electronics.

Giant Rydberg Excitons in Synthetic and Artificial Cuprous Oxide

“…The emerging research field of Rydberg excitons in cuprous oxide is facilitating an exciting crossover between two previously siloed disciplines: cold-atom physics and semiconductor quantum optics. The coherent spectroscopy of Rydberg states in gas-phase atomic systems has garnered great recent interest, with applications in the measurement of electromagnetic fields from DC to terahertz frequencies [1,2], quantum simulation [3] and computation [4], and quantum optics [5]. There is clear interest in observing similar states in semiconductor systems, where half a century of development in state-of-theart nano-fabrication techniques provide capabilities that go way beyond those available in the gas phase.…”

Rydberg Atom Electric Field Sensors for Communications and Sensing

“…For warm atoms, the decoherence rate is generally limited by transit-time broadening, i.e., the time it takes for atoms to leave the cross-sectional area of the optical fields. The transit-time-induced decoherence rate is a function of the particular beam width and atomic temperature used in a given experiment; one recent work estimated this rate to be around 3 MHz where the 1/e 2 beam diameters of the probe and control light were 410 µm and 380 µm, respectively [4]. For cold atoms, because the atoms can remain within the optical cross section for a much longer duration, transit time broadening is no longer the dominant decoherence mechanism.…”

“…The off-resonant AC Stark shift measurement technique is distinct from, and less sensitive than, the resonant Autler-Townes technique where the spectroscopic peak splits in two. Techniques used for detecting off-resonant fields include a heterodyne detection scheme [4,9,11] or a self-calibrating instrument that measures the bare AC Stark shift [2,10]. These techniques have recently been investigated experimentally for precision metrology [2] and ultrawideband spectrum analysis [11].…”

“…(n + 1)P 3/2 Rydberg transitions in cesium with 10  n  100. The warm atom case assumes Na = 1000 atoms and a decoherence time of 0.3 µs [4]. The two cold atom cases assume different atom numbers (Na = 10 3 and 10 4 atoms) and a decoherence time calculated from Ref.…”

“…Atomic electric field sensors are projected to enable novel capabilities for niche applications in communications and sensing, especially in situations where the carrier frequency is known. This emerging quantum technology has key performance advantages including good sensitivity, intrinsic accuracy, small physical size, narrow selectivity, and broad tunability [1,2,3,4]. In recent years, there has been a surge of new research and engineering of these sensors, including the development of a miniaturized sensor head [2,5] and the first demonstration of angle-of-arrival measurements [6].…”