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arXiv:2105.11180 · Physical Review A

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

Catriona A. Thomson, Michael Edmund Tobar, Maxim Goryachev

Published Mar 17, 2022• 2 citations
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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 ${\text{Fe}}^{3+}$ spin ensemble hosted by a high-purity ${\text{Al}}_{2}{\text{O}}_{3}$ 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.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.105.033511

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Fe(3+) ions in sapphire exhibit an electron spin resonance which interacts strongly with high-Q whispering gallery modes at microwave frequencies. We report the first observation of a third-order paramagnetic nonlinear susceptibility in such a resonator at cryogenic temperatures and the first demonstration of four-wave mixing using this parametric nonlinearity. This observation of an all-microwave nonlinearity is an enabling step towards a host of quantum measurement and control applications which utilize spins in solids.
We report the study of interactions between cavity photons and paramagnetic Cr3+{\mathrm{Cr}}^{3+}Cr3+ spins in a ruby (Cr3+:Al2O3){(\mathrm{Cr}}^{3+}:{\mathrm{Al}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3})(Cr3+:Al2​O3​) whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonator. Examining the system at microwave frequencies and millikelvin temperatures, spin-photon couplings up to 610 MHz or about 5% of photon energy are observed between the impurity spins and high quality factor (Q>105)(Q>{10}^{5})(Q>105) WGM. Large tunability and spin-spin interaction allows operation in the strong coupling regime. The system exhibits behavior not predicted by the usual Tavis-Cummings model because of interactions within the two-level spin bath, and the existence of numerous photonic modes.