Compact blackbody-radiation atomic sensor: Measuring temperature using optically excited atoms in vapor cells

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We demonstrate a blackbody-radiation thermometer based on optically excited rubidium atoms in a vapor cell. The temperature measurement is fast, with statistical uncertainty as low as 0.1% in one second. We resolve temperature with a precision of 0.04% in the range 308--344 K when averaging for several seconds. Additionally, we describe an extension to this measurement scheme where the device operates as a self-calibrated, or primary, thermometer. We make progress toward realizing a primary thermometer by demonstrating a temperature-dependent self-consistent calibration scheme, with temperature accuracy of the order of 1% limited by the uncertainty in atomic transition dipole matrix elements.