Atom-based sensing technique of microwave electric and magnetic fields via a single rubidium vapor cell.

Abstract

We present an atom-based approach for determining microwave electric and magnetic fields by using a single rubidium vapor cell in a microwave waveguide. For a 87Rb cascade three-level system employed in our experiment, a weak probe laser driving the lower transition, 5S1/2→5P3/2, is first used to measure the microwave magnetic field based on the atomic Rabi resonance. When a counter-propagating strong coupling laser is subsequently turned on to drive the Rydberg transition, 5P3/2→67D5/2, the same probe laser is then used as a Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) probe to measure the microwave electric field by investigating the resonant microwave dressed Autler-Townes splitting (ATS). By tuning the hyperfine transition frequency of the ground state using an experimentally feasible static magnetic field, we first achieved a measurement of the microwave electric and magnetic field strength at the same microwave frequency of 6.916 GHz. Based on the ideal relationship between the electric and magnetic field components, we obtained the equivalent microwave magnetic fields by fitting the inversion to the measured microwave electric fields, which demonstrated that the results were in agreement with the experimental measurement of the microwave magnetic fields in the same microwave power range. This study provides new experimental evidence for quantum-based microwave measurements of electric and magnetic fields by a single sensor in the same system.