Persistent coherent beating in coupled parametric oscillators

Abstract

Coupled parametric oscillators were recently employed as simulators of artificial Ising networks, with the potential to solve computationally hard minimization problems. We demonstrate a new dynamical regime within the simplest network - two coupled parametric oscillators, where the oscillators never reach a steady state, but show persistent, full-scale, coherent beats, whose frequency reflects the coupling properties and strength. We present a detailed theoretical and experimental study and show that this new dynamical regime appears over a wide range of parameters near the oscillation threshold and depends on the nature of the coupling (dissipative or energy preserving). Thus, a system of coupled parametric oscillators transcends the Ising description and manifests unique coherent dynamics, which may have important implications for coherent computation machines.