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We're one step closer to atomic radio

Scientists at the National Institute for Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, have brought us one step closer to "atomic radio" by using an atom-based receiver to make a stereo recording of music streamed into the laboratory—namely, Queen's "Under Pressure." They described their work in a new paper in AIP Advances.

So-called "Rydberg atoms" are atoms that are in an especially excited state well above their ground (lowest-energy) state. This makes them extra-sensitive to passing electric fields, like the alternating fields of radio waves. All you need is a means of detecting those interactions to turn them into quantum sensors—like a laser. That means, in principle, that Rydberg atoms could receive and play back radio signals.

[...] The recordings aren't going to challenge the dominance of digital recording any time soon, since they are of much lower sound quality, more akin to an old vinyl record. That said, "My vision is to cut a CD in the lab—our studio—at some point and have the first CD recorded with Rydberg atoms," said Holloway—if only as a fun scientific curiosity. But one day, the researcher believes this type of atomic sensing could help improve secure communications. "Atom-based antennas might give us a better way of picking up audio data in the presence of noise, potentially even the very weak signals transmitted in deep space communications," he said.

DOI: AIP Advances, 2019. 10.1063/1.5099036  (About DOIs).

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