Reactive near-field subwavelength microwave imaging with a non-invasive Rydberg probe

Abstract

Non-invasive microwave field imaging--accurately mapping field distributions without perturbing them--is essential in areas such as aerospace engineering, biomedical imaging and integrated-circuit diagnostics. Conventional metal probes, however, inevitably perturb reactive near fields: they act as strong scatterers that drive induced currents and secondary radiation, remap evanescent components and thereby degrade both accuracy and spatial resolution, particularly in the reactive near-field regime that is most relevant to these applications. Here we demonstrate, to our knowledge for the first time, reactive near-field subwavelength imaging of microwave fields using the quantum non-demolition properties of Rydberg atoms, realized with a compact, non-invasive single-ended fibre-integrated Rydberg probe engineered to minimize field disturbance. The probe achieves an imaging resolution of {\unboldmath$\lambda/56$}, and the measured field distributions agree with full-wave simulations with structural similarity approaching unity, confirming both its subwavelength spatial resolution and its genuinely non-invasive character compared with conventional metal-based probes. Because the atomic sensor is intrinsically isotropic, the same device can faithfully image multi-dimensional field structures without orientation-dependent calibration. Our results therefore establish a general, non-invasive route to high-accuracy, subwavelength reactive near-field microwave imaging, with particular promise for applications such as chip-defect detection and integrated-circuit diagnostics, where even small perturbations by the probe can mask the underlying physics of interest.