Entanglement-Enhanced Radio-Frequency Field Detection and Waveform Sensing

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Jul 28;119(4):043603. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.043603. Epub 2017 Jul 25.

Abstract

We demonstrate a new technique for detecting the amplitude of arbitrarily chosen components of radio-frequency waveforms based on stroboscopic backaction evading measurements. We combine quantum nondemolition measurements and stroboscopic probing to detect waveform components with magnetic sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit. Using an ensemble of 1.5×10^{6} cold rubidium atoms, we demonstrate entanglement-enhanced sensing of sinusoidal and linearly chirped waveforms, with 1.0(2) and 0.8(3) dB metrologically relevant noise reduction, respectively. We achieve volume-adjusted sensitivity of δBsqrt[V]≈3.96 fTsqrt[cm^{3}/Hz], comparable to the best rf magnetometers.