Phase-sensitive amplification of an optical field using microwaves

We report phase-sensitive amplification (PSA) of a near-infrared electromagnetic field using room-temperature ⁸⁵Rb atoms possessing ground-state coherence. Our novelty is in achieving significant optical PSA by manipulating the intensity and phase of a frequency-separated microwave field. PSA is obtained by inducing a three-wave mixing nonlinear process utilising a three-level cyclic scheme in the D1 manifold. We achieve a near-ideal PSA with a gain of 7 dB over a range of 500 kHz bandwidth with very low pump-field intensities and with low optical depths. Such a hybrid, ground-state-coherence-assisted PSA is the first such demonstration using atomic ensembles.