Observation and control of polariton noise in a thermal Rydberg atom electrometer
Abstract
The establishment of metrics and control of fundamental noise sources in quantum sensing is a long-standing goal in quantum science and technology. We report on the observation of polariton-mediated optical noise in a thermal Rydberg atom vapor and demonstrate its active control and suppression using a radio-frequency field in Rydberg electrometry. The noise exhibits structured amplification and reduction across the Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency resonance. This reveals a nonlinear slow-light feedback mechanism in which the polariton medium stores and releases probe-field energy. We show that the reference radio-frequency field used in Rydberg heterodyne receivers can also tune the medium into an operating regime where high electromagnetic-field responsivity coincides with reduced optical noise. This operating-point control enables optimization of the electric-field sensitivity within the constraints imposed by Rydberg-polariton physics. These results establish polariton noise as a previously unrecognized intrinsic noise source in thermal Rydberg vapors and the corresponding control method as a crucial aspect of continued efforts to achieve fundamental sensitivity limits in Rydberg electrometry.
Related
- Observation of a supersolid phase in a spin-orbit coupled exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensate
- Observation of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between photon and polariton
- Observation of s-p Coupling in Ultralong-Range Rydberg Molecules
- Achieving a long lifetime synchronized state in a thermal vapor Rydberg time crystal
- Thermal quasi-Devil's staircase in an anisotropic triangular-lattice Rydberg array
BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026observation,
title = {{Observation and control of polariton noise in a thermal Rydberg atom electrometer}},
author = {Teng Zhang and Luís Felipe Gonçalves and Alisher Duspayev and Georg Raithel and David A. Anderson},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.26479},
eprint = {2610.26479},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.26479},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Observation and control of polariton noise in a thermal Rydberg atom electrometer
AU - Teng Zhang
AU - Luís Felipe Gonçalves
AU - Alisher Duspayev
AU - Georg Raithel
AU - David A. Anderson
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.26479
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.26479
AB - The establishment of metrics and control of fundamental noise sources in quantum sensing is a long-standing goal in quantum science and technology. We report on the observation of polariton-mediated optical noise in a thermal Rydberg atom vapor and demonstrate its active control and suppression using a radio-frequency field in Rydberg electrometry. The noise exhibits structured amplification and reduction across the Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency resonance. This reveals a nonlinear slow-light feedback mechanism in which the polariton medium stores and releases probe-field energy. We show that the reference radio-frequency field used in Rydberg heterodyne receivers can also tune the medium into an operating regime where high electromagnetic-field responsivity coincides with reduced optical noise. This operating-point control enables optimization of the electric-field sensitivity within the constraints imposed by Rydberg-polariton physics. These results establish polariton noise as a previously unrecognized intrinsic noise source in thermal Rydberg vapors and the corresponding control method as a crucial aspect of continued efforts to achieve fundamental sensitivity limits in Rydberg electrometry.
ER -