A multi-band atomic candle with microwave-dressed Rydberg atoms

doi:10.1007/s11467-022-1218-6

Front. Phys.

2023, Vol. 18

Issue (1) : 12302 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-022-1218-6

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A multi-band atomic candle with microwave-dressed Rydberg atoms

Yafen Cai¹, Shuai Shi¹, Yijia Zhou², Jianhao Yu¹, Yali Tian¹, Yitong Li¹, Kuan Zhang¹, Chenhao Du¹, Weibin Li³(

), Lin Li¹(

)

¹. MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurement, Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF, Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
². Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics, Beijing 100193, China
³. School of Physics and Astronomy and Centre for the Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of Quantum Non-equilibrium Systems, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

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Abstract

Stabilizing important physical quantities to atom-based standards lies at the heart of modern atomic, molecular and optical physics, and is widely applied to the field of precision metrology. Of particular importance is the atom-based microwave field amplitude stabilizer, the so-called atomic candle. Previous atomic candles are realized with atoms in their ground state, and hence suffer from the lack of frequency band tunability and small stabilization bandwidth, severely limiting their development and potential applications. To tackle these limitations, we employ microwave-dressed Rydberg atoms to realize a novel atomic candle that features multi-band frequency tunability and large stabilization bandwidth. We demonstrate amplitude stabilization of microwave field from C-band to Ka-band, which could be extended to quasi-DC and terahertz fields by exploring abundant Rydberg levels. Our atomic candle achieves stabilization bandwidth of 100 Hz, outperforming previous ones by more than two orders of magnitude. Our simulation indicates the stabilization bandwidth can be further increased up to 100 kHz. Our work paves a route to develop novel electric field control and applications with a noise-resilient, miniaturized, sensitive and broadband atomic candle.

Keywords Rydberg atoms microwave atomic spectroscopy

Corresponding Author(s): Weibin Li,Lin Li

Issue Date: 23 November 2022

Cite this article:

Yafen Cai,Shuai Shi,Yijia Zhou, et al. A multi-band atomic candle with microwave-dressed Rydberg atoms[J]. Front. Phys. , 2023, 18(1): 12302.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/10.1007/s11467-022-1218-6
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/Y2023/V18/I1/12302

Fig.1 Schematic of the Rydberg atomic candle experiment. The MW-dressed Rydberg spectrum acts as the ACS, which is obtained via a ladder-type EIT scheme. The MW field emitted by a horn resonantly couples Rydberg states

| r 1 ?

and

| r 2 ?

. A balanced detection scheme with a 795 nm reference beam is implemented to further suppress Doppler background and high-frequency intensity noise of the probe field (see Supplementary Information for details). The error signal is generated by introducing a 50 kHz frequency modulation to the probe laser and then demodulating the ACS. The amplitude of the MW field is stabilized by a feedback control loop with the error signal as input. Inset shows the relevant atomic levels of ⁸⁷Rb, where

| g ? = | 5 S 1 / 2, F = 2 ?

| e ? = | 5 P 1 / 2, F = 1 ?, | r 1 ? = | n D 3 / 2 ?

, and

| r 2 ? = | (n + 1) P 1 / 2 ?

Fig.2 Experimental data of the atomic candle signal and error signal. (a) The spectra of MW-dressed Rydberg states

| + ?

by scanning the probe laser detuning

Δ p

. The MW field amplitudes are

6.74 ± 0.05 m V · c m − 1

(green),

12.01 ±

0.05 m V · c m − 1

(blue),

15.13 ± 0.05 m V · c m − 1

(brown), respectively. (b) The atomic candle signal. The target MW field amplitude and corresponding probe laser detuning are

12.01 ±

0.05 m V · c m − 1

and

Δ p / (2 π) = 7.73 ± 0.03 M H z

, respectively. The detuning is marked by the vertical dashed line in (a). The blue circles show the probe transmission by varying MW field amplitude. The peak transmission is reached at the target MW field amplitude. The corresponding error signal (purple squares) acts as the MW field amplitude discriminator.

Fig.3 Comparison between theoretical simulation and experimental data for the atomic candle signal and error signal. The solid blue curve and blue circles represent the simulated and experimental atomic candle signal with target MW field amplitude of

12.01 ± 0.05 m V · c m − 1

, which corresponds to a fixed probe laser detuning of

Δ p / (2 π) = 7.73 ± 0.03 M H z

. The corresponding simulated and experimental error signals are shown as dashed purple curve and purple squares.

Fig.4 Performance of the Rydberg atomic candle. Frequency tunability of the Rydberg atomic candle from MW C-band to Ka-band is shown (band is labelled in the figure). The corresponding transitions are

| 47 D 3 / 2 ? ↔

| 48 P 1 / 2 ?, | 50 D 3 / 2 ? ↔ | 51 P 1 / 2 ?, | 63 D 3 / 2 ? ↔ | 64 P 1 / 2 ?, | 74 D 3 / 2 ? ↔

| 75 P 1 / 2 ?

, respectively. The resilience to disturbance is demonstrated by applying a

5 H z

disturbance in MW field amplitude. The relative amplitude of the MW field as a function of time is shown in each panel, when the feedback control loop is open (brown diamonds) and closed (blue circles).

Fig.5 Noise-resilience of the Rydberg atomic candle. (a) The noise resilience is verified by superimposing a disturbance at random frequency spanning from 5 Hz to 150 Hz to the MW field amplitude. (b) The Fourier spectrum of the noise disturbance with feedback loop open and closed. For the disturbance below 100 Hz, the Rydberg atomic candle realized more than two orders of magnitude suppression in the MW field amplitude fluctuation.

Fig.6 Dynamic range of the Rydberg atomic candle at

14.8

GHz. MW field amplitudes, ranging from

11.3 m V · c m − 1

82.3 m V · c m − 1

, can be stabilized by changing the probe laser detuning.

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