Bistable phase control via rocking in a nonlinear electronic oscillator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates experimentally that a nonlinear electronic oscillator can be phase-locked to a periodic driving signal with alternating phase, exhibiting phase bistability, and supports this with a theoretical analysis using a normal form model.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of phase bistability in a rocked nonlinear electronic oscillator and provides experimental and theoretical evidence for this phenomenon.

Findings

Oscillator locks to the driving frequency and phase shifts by pi.

The phase bistability is achieved through periodic phase alternation of the input.

Theoretical analysis confirms the experimental observations using a normal form model.

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate the effective rocking of a nonlinear electronic circuit operating in a periodic regime. Namely, we show that driving a Chua circuit with a periodic signal, whose phase alternates (also periodically) in time, we lock the oscillation frequency of the circuit to that of the driving signal, and its phase to one of two possible values shifted by pi, and lying between the alternating phases of the input signal. In this way, we show that a rocked nonlinear oscillator displays phase bistability. We interpret the experimental results via a theoretical analysis of rocking on a simple oscillator model, based on a normal form description (complex Landau equation) of the rocked Hopf bifurcation