2025/09/18 by Dangka Shylla, Rajavardhan Talashila, Shylla, Dangka +17
Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Frequency and Time Standards #Air Quality Monitoring and Forecasting #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.15463
openalex publication_date 2025/09/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate a technique for detecting radio-frequency (RF) electric fields in a Cesium (Cs) vapor cell at room temperature by collecting charge from ionized Rydberg atoms and compare its performance with the established method of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). By applying a known RF field, we measure the response from both the electrical (ionization current-based) and optical (EIT-based) readouts. The ionization current-based method yields a sensitivity of 22~μVm-1Hz-1/2, while the EIT-based method achieves 3.7~μVm-1Hz-1/2. The sensitivity of the ionization current-based method is limited by thermal noise arising from a 2.2~kΩ resistance between the collection electrodes, attributed to a thin Cs film on the inner surfaces of the vapor cell. Controlling or eliminating the Cs layer can significantly improve the sensitivity of this ionization approach.