Achieving 100$\,$MHz Instantaneous Bandwidth in a Broadband Rydberg Microwave Sensor

Abstract

Rydberg atoms have attracted considerable attention in recent years as a novel platform for microwave sensing, owing to their unique physical merits: large transition dipole moments between Rydberg levels and broad frequency coverage. As a critical figure of merit for Rydberg microwave sensors, instantaneous bandwidth serves as a key benchmark for evaluating their viability in practical applications. Previous studies on instantaneous bandwidth remain limited to single-frequency operation, with typical demonstrated values of only tens of megahertz, a constraint that hampers the real-world deployment of this sensing technology. Here, we experimentally achieve an instantaneous bandwidth of over 100$\,$MHz across a broad frequency range of 2.7-20$\,$GHz and realize a sensitivity in the hundreds of nV$\,$cm$^{-1}\,$Hz$^{-1/2}$ range. The physical mechanism lies in the dressed-state coherence and the interference effect between different transition channels. Our work substantially broadens the instantaneous bandwidth of Rydberg microwave sensors and paves the way for their practical deployment in fields such as radar and wireless communications.