Quantum sensing protocol for motionally chiral Rydberg atoms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a quantum sensing protocol using Rydberg atoms to detect motion-induced chirality, leveraging a bichromatic light field and interferometry techniques to measure chiral energy shifts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method combining Rydberg atom dressing and interferometry to demonstrate motionally induced chirality in quantum systems.

Findings

Optimal dressing laser parameters identified.

Chiral energy shifts estimated using quantum electrodynamics.

System demonstrates sensitivity to motion-induced chirality.

Abstract

A quantum sensing protocol is proposed for demonstrating the motion-induced chirality of circularly polarised Rydberg atoms. To this end, a cloud of Rydberg atoms is dressed by a bichromatic light field. This allows to exploit the long-lived ground states for implementing a Ramsey interferometer in conjunction with a spin echo pulse sequence for refocussing achiral interactions. Optimal parameters for the dressing lasers are identified. Combining a circularly polarised dipole transition in the Rydberg atom with atomic centre-of-mass motion, the system becomes chiral. The resulting discriminatory chiral energy shifts induced by a chiral mirror are estimated using a macroscopic quantum electrodynamics approach.