2016/01/11 by David A. Anderson, Stephanie A. Miller, Joshua A. Gordon +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.atom-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevapplied.5.034003
published as Phys. Rev. Applied 5, 034003 (2016)
arxiv created 2016/01/11 · arxiv updated 2016/03/09
We present a spectral analysis of Rydberg atoms in strong microwave fields using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) as an all-optical readout. The measured spectroscopic response enables optical, atom-based electric field measurements of high-power microwaves. In our experiments, microwaves are irradiated into a room-temperature rubidium vapor cell. The microwaves are tuned near the two-photon 65D-66D Rydberg transition and reach an electric field strength of 230V/m, about 20% of the microwave ionization threshold of these atoms. A Floquet treatment is used to model the Rydberg level energies and their excitation rates. We arrive at an empirical model for the field-strength distribution inside the spectroscopic cell that yields excellent overall agreement between the measured and calculated Rydberg EIT-Floquet spectra. Using spectral features in the Floquet maps we achieve an absolute strong-field measurement precision of 6%.