Observation of parity-time symmetry in time-division multiplexing pulsed optoelectronic oscillators within a single resonator

Abstract

In recent years, parity-time (PT) symmetry in optoelectronic systems has been widely studied, due to its potential applications in lasers, sensors, topological networks, and other fields. In this paper, a time-division multiplexed pulsed optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is proposed to study the dynamics of a PT symmetry system. Two microwave pulses are used to realize the PT symmetry in a single spatial resonator based on the temporal degrees of freedom. The gain and loss of the microwave pulses and the coupling coefficient between them can then be controlled. We first demonstrate the phase diagram from PT broken to PT symmetry in the OEO system. We theoretically prove that the perturbation of a coupling-induced phase shift larger than ( 2 π ) × 10 − 2 causes the disappearance of the PT symmetry. In this experiment, the perturbation is less than ( 2 π ) × 0.5 × 10 − 2 ; thus, the phase transition of PT symmetry is observed. In addition, multipairs of PT-symmetry pulses indicate that pulsed OEO could be used to implement complex non-Hermitian Hamilton systems. Therefore, it is confirmed that pulsed OEO is an excellent platform to explore the dynamics of PT symmetry and other non-Hermitian Hamiltonian systems.