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arXiv · 2610.03560

Beyond the PT-Broken Phase: Constant-Frequency Oscillation from Floquet Hybridization

Abstract

Constant-frequency oscillation is usually tied to the broken phase of a spatially coupled PT-symmetric dimer, where the eigenfrequencies form a complex-conjugate pair with a fixed real part. This work shows that an analogous locking can instead come from Floquet hybridization in a synthetic frequency dimension. Periodic gain--loss modulation folds the spectrum into replicas spaced by the drive frequency $Ω$. Coupling between neighboring replicas opens an additional real-part degeneracy at the edge of the Floquet Brillouin zone. The hybridized Floquet mode at $ω_0\pmΩ/2$ requires the minimum gain and is therefore selected for the self-oscillation. A Floquet PT-symmetric circuit with a JFET time-varying negative resistance confirms the prediction. The observed constant-frequency oscillation contains two frequency components of comparable amplitude, separated by the modulation frequency, which identifies its origin from Floquet hybridization rather than ordinary PT-symmetry breaking or dispersion flattening. More broadly, once a suitably symmetry-constrained spectral degeneracy is established, self-sustained frequency pinning can arise beyond the conventional spatial PT-broken phase.

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Xiaoke Gao, Xiaoyin Sha, Xunyan Sun, Xianglin Hao, Huaiqing Zhang, Tianyu Dong. 2026-10-02. Beyond the PT-Broken Phase: Constant-Frequency Oscillation from Floquet Hybridization. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03560

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