Rydberg RF receiver operation to track RF signal fading and frequency drift

Abstract

Significant progress has been made in recent years demonstrating an all-optical high sensitivity Radio Frequency (RF) sensor exploiting the Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) effect in an atomic vapor. In order to exploit the potential of these Rydberg RF receivers in practical telecommunications applications, it is necessary to operate these devices outside of a sophisticated optics laboratory and to use rugged components in a noisy environment. We present a simple analytic model for the operation of a sensitive Rydberg RF receiver to predict the optical modulation in response to an RF signal. We show that the optical modulation depth can be maximized using an optimum coupling intensity. The optical modulation depth drops off rapidly as the RF source is detuned away from resonance. By detuning the coupling frequency to compensate for the RF detuning we demonstrate that the useful RF bandwidth of the receiver can be significantly extended. We measure this variation in optical response using a Rubidium vapor at a 15GHz RF carrier frequency. Using readily available optical components we obtain good agreement with our model. This convenient analytic approach will simplify the design and operation of Rydberg RF receivers as sensitive components in future 5G mobile communications, particularly for the power-limited uplink from mobile device to base-station.