Continuous Quantum Aperture: Beamforming with a Single-Vapor-Cell Rydberg Receiver
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2604.09068 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 10 Apr 2026] Title:Continuous Quantum Aperture: Beamforming with a Single-Vapor-Cell Rydberg Receiver Authors:Mingyao Cui, Qunsong Zeng, Minze Chen, Yilin Wang, Zhiao Zhu, Tianqi Mao, Dezhi Zheng, Kaibin Huang, Jun Zhang View a PDF of the paper titled Continuous Quantum Aperture: Beamforming with a Single-Vapor-Cell Rydberg Receiver, by Mingyao Cui and 8 other authors View PDF Abstract:Beamforming is conventionally understood as a collective property of many discrete antenna elements in both communication and radar fields, which links angular selectivity to array size, element spacing, and band-specific hardware. Here we uncover a fundamentally different beamforming mechanism achieved by a Rydberg atomic receiver: a Rydberg-atom vapor cell dressed by a local-oscillator field constitutes a continuous quantum aperture. In this regime, spatially-varying quantum coherence across the aperture provides continuous amplitude-phase control, allowing a directional beam pattern to emerge from one sensing volume rather than from an engineered array. We establish the theory of continuous quantum aperture and show that tailoring the local-oscillator field can directly program the aperture response. This enables reconfigurable single-peak, multipeak, and multiband beamforming within a single vapor cell. Experiments on a Rydberg atomic receiver prototype verify that practical beam patterns agree with theoretical predictions across aperture sizes, frequency bands, and local-oscillator configurations. Leveraging this new beamforming mechanism, we further demonstrate interference mitigation, multiuser access, and multiband multiuser access with the single-vapor-cell platform. Our results identify the continuous quantum aperture as a new operating principle of Rydberg atomic receivers and establish single-vapor-cell beamforming as an integrated and reconfigurable platform for spatially selective electromagnetic reception. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.09068 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2604.09068v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.09068 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Mingyao Cui [view email] [v1] Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:50:23 UTC (17,977 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Continuous Quantum Aperture: Beamforming with a Single-Vapor-Cell Rydberg Receiver, by Mingyao Cui and 8 other authorsView PDF view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-04 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)