Manipulating optical properties of rubidium through microwave interactions

Abstract

Information transfer between a microwave field and light, also known as microwave-to optical transduction, is a key area of research in quantum communication technology aimed at developing an interface between the superconducting processing devices operating at microwave frequencies and optical photons used for transferring quantum information over distance. Atomic vapors offer a good platform for such interfaces since they naturally support transitions at microwave and optical frequencies. In this work, we explored microwave-to-optical transduction in rubidium ensembles. We proposed a transduction method based on microwave-optical double resonance, where we can control the ensemble optical properties via non-linear interactions with a microwave magnetic field. With this method, we demonstrate the transduction of an audio signal from frequency-modulated and amplitude-modulated microwave fields to optical intensity modulation. We also present a protocol for engineering atomic spin polarization with microwave-assisted optical pumping and consider its applications for polarization-selective frequency conversion and microwave-controlled optical rotation.