Generation of bimodal solitons in a sapphire whispering-gallery-mode maser at millikelvin temperatures

Abstract

We present experimental observations of bimodal solitons in a solid state three-level maser cooled to millikelvin temperatures. The maser is built on a highly dilute Fe3+ spin ensemble hosted by a high-purity Al2O3 crystal constituting a high-quality factor whispering-gallery-mode resonator. The maser is pumped through one of these modes, near 31 GHz, generating two signals near 12.04 GHz from two distinct modes, 8 MHz apart. The system demonstrates three regimes, namely, a continuous-wave regime, a dense soliton regime, and a sparse soliton regime. These results open other avenues for studying nonlinear wave phenomena using microwave systems as well as different applications of solitons in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum.