Electrically-Small Rydberg Sensor for Three-Dimensional Determination of rf k-Vectors

Abstract

We present an electrically-small Rydberg atom electric field sensor with the ability to extract the three-dimensional $k$-vector of an elliptically polarized radio frequency (rf) field. In most mediums, the $k$-vector (or wave vector) provides the direction of propagation of an electromagnetic wave. Our method uses a field vector measurement at a single point in space and is thus compatible with a sensor volume that is arbitrarily small compared to the carrier wavelength. We measure the $k$-vector of a circularly polarized signal field with average absolute errors in the polar and azimuthal angles of $33\text{mrad}$ and $43\text{mrad}$ respectively, and statistical noise of $1.3\text{mrad}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ and $1.5\text{mrad}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$. Additionally, we characterize the performance of the sensor as a function of the ellipticity of the input field and the size of the sensing region. We find that the sensor works over a broad range of ellipticities and validate that an electrically-small sensing region is optimal.

6 pages, 4 figures

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• The Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) Project
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Angle-of-arrival detection of radio-frequency waves via Rydberg atom fluorescence imaging of standing waves in a glass vapor cell