Critical Microwave Mach-Zehnder-Type Interferometry with Dual-LO Rydberg Atoms
摘要
High-precision phase measurement of microwave fields underpins a wide range of applications, including wireless communications, distributed radar, plasma diagnostics, and antenna metrology. Existing Rydberg-atom-based approaches, however, often face trade-offs among phase resolution, measurement range, and system complexity. Here we demonstrate a Rydberg-atom-based microwave Mach-Zehnder-type interferometer using a dual-local-oscillator configuration. The two local oscillators establish two coherent interferometric pathways in the Rydberg medium. Their coherent mixing with the signal field produces an interferometric intermediate-frequency output governed by a phase-to-intensity transfer characteristic that enables critical-point enhancement. This scheme supports direct phase retrieval with a resolution exceeding and unambiguous full phase coverage with the reconfigurable dual-LO architecture. Moreover, near the critical interference point, the system exhibits a sharply enhanced phase-to-amplitude transduction, where weak amplitude variations are converted into pronounced phase responses, yielding a sensitivity enhancement exceeding 25 dB. Besides, the same interferometric transfer mechanism enables microwave propagation-distance and polarization metrology, achieving a propagation-distance precision below 20 m at 5.7 GHz together with a polarization-angle resolution exceeding . This approach eliminates the need for complex optical configurations and lock-in detection, providing a simple, scalable, and reconfigurable Mach-Zehnder-type quantum microwave interferometry framework for multifunctional high-precision microwave metrology.
引用
@article{arxiv.2608.13222,
title = {Critical Microwave Mach-Zehnder-Type Interferometry with Dual-LO Rydberg Atoms},
author = {Jun-Rong Chen and Guo-Qing Qin and Peng-Fu Liang and He Hao and Ming-Min Zhao and Ling-Qiang Meng and Gui-Lan Li and Min-Jian Zhao and Bin-Bin Wei and Hao Tian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.13222},
year = {2026}
}