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arXiv:2504.00751 · Science Advances

Experimental realization and synchronization of a quantum van der Pol oscillator

Y. Li, Zihan Xie, Xiaodong Yang, Yue Li, Xingyu Zhao, Xu Cheng, Xinhua Peng, Jun Li, Eric Lutz, Yiheng Lin, Jiangfeng Du

Published Oct 10, 2025• 17 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Classical self-sustained oscillators, which generate periodic motion without periodic external forcing, are ubiquitous in science and technology. The realization of nonclassical self-oscillators is an important goal of quantum physics. We here present the experimental implementation of a quantum van der Pol oscillator, a paradigmatic autonomous quantum driven-dissipative system with nonlinear damping, using a single trapped atom. We demonstrate the existence of a quantum limit cycle in phase space in the absence of a drive and the occurrence of quantum synchronization when the nonlinear oscillator is externally driven. We additionally show that synchronization can be enhanced with the help of squeezing perpendicular to the direction of the drive and, counterintuitively, linear dissipation. We also observe the bifurcation to a bistable phase-space distribution for large squeezing. Our results pave the way for the exploration of self-sustained quantum oscillators and their application to quantum technology.

DOI
10.1126/sciadv.ady5649

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Classical self-sustained oscillators, which generate periodic motion without periodic external forcing, are ubiquitous in science and technology. The realization of nonclassical self-oscillators is an important goal of quantum physics. We here present the experimental implementation of a quantum van der Pol oscillator, a paradigmatic autonomous quantum driven-dissipative system with nonlinear damping, using a single trapped atom. We demonstrate the existence of a quantum limit cycle in phase space in the absence of a drive and the occurrence of quantum synchronization when the nonlinear oscillator is externally driven. We additionally show that synchronization can be enhanced with the help of squeezing perpendicular to the direction of the drive and, counterintuitively, linear dissipation. We also observe the bifurcation to a bistable phase-space distribution for large squeezing. Our results pave the way for the exploration of self-sustained quantum oscillators and their application to quantum technology.
Synchronization is a hallmark of collective behavior that emerges when nonlinear systems interact, spanning scales from mechanical oscillators to planetary orbits. As a universal phenomenon, it underpins the study of complex systems and has far-reaching technological implications. While classical synchronization has a long and rich history, it has not been observed experimentally between multiple quantum limit-cycle oscillators despite a decade of theoretical investigations. We realize synchronization between two quantum van der Pol oscillators by engineering dissipation in a mixed-isotope trapped-ion quantum simulator. The synchronized state is encoded in a fixed relative phase between the oscillators that is inaccessible to individual measurements and revealed only through joint readout of both oscillators, in stark contrast to the system in the (deterministic) classical limit where synchronization can be observed via individual phase measurements. We further show that the relative phase can be precisely controlled and that the chain of two oscillators can synchronize to an external field, suggesting applications in sensing. Our results provide a promising pathway for studying more complex synchronized quantum dynamics beyond two oscillators, where a theoretical treatment becomes increasingly challenging, and it remains to be understood whether genuinely quantum features persist in such cases.
We implement nonlinear anharmonic interaction in the coupled van der Pol oscillators to investigate the quantum synchronization behavior of the systems. We study the quantum synchronization in two oscillator models, coupled quantum van der Pol oscillators and anharmonic self-oscillators. We demonstrate that the considered systems exhibit a high-order synchronization through coupling in both classical and quantum domains. We show that, due to the anharmonicity of the nonlinear interaction between the oscillators, the system exhibits phonon blockade in the phase-locking regime, which is a pure nonclassical effect and has not been observed in the classical domain. We also demonstrate that, for coupled anharmonic oscillators, the system shows a multiple resonance phase-locking behavior due to nonlinear interaction. We point out that the synchronization blockade arises due to strong anticorrelation between the oscillators, which leads to phonon antibunching in the same parametric regime. In the anharmonic oscillator case we illustrate the simultaneous occurrence of bunching and antibunching effects as a consequence of simultaneous negative and positive correlation between the anharmonic oscillators. We examine the aforementioned characteristic features in the frequency entrainment of the oscillators using a power spectrum where one can observe normal mode splitting and the Mollow triplet in the strong coupling regime. Finally, we propose a possible experimental realization for the considered system in the trapped ion and optomechanical setting.
Recently, several studies have investigated synchronization in quantum-mechanical limit-cycle oscillators. However, the quantum nature of these systems remained partially hidden, since the dynamics of the oscillator's phase was overdamped and therefore incoherent. We show that there exist regimes of underdamped and even quantum-coherent phase motion, opening up new possibilities to study quantum synchronization dynamics. To this end, we investigate the Van der Pol oscillator (a paradigm for a self-oscillating system) synchronized to an external drive. We derive an effective quantum model which fully describes the regime of underdamped phase motion and additionally allows us to identify the quality of quantum coherence. Finally, we identify quantum limit cycles of the phase itself.
Van der Pol oscillators are prototypical self-sustaining oscillators which have been used to model nonlinear processes in biological and other classical processes. In this work, we investigate how quantum fluctuations affect phase-locking in one or many van der Pol oscillators. We find that phase-locking is much more robust in the quantum model than in the equivalent classical model. Trapped-ion experiments are ideally suited to simulate van der Pol oscillators in the quantum regime via sideband heating and cooling of motional modes. We provide realistic experimental parameters for 171Yb+{}^{171}\text{Yb}^+171Yb+ achievable with current technology.
We investigate how Kerr nonlinearity modifies quantum synchronization in a squeezed quantum van der Pol oscillator. We show that the Kerr interaction produces an amplitude-dependent frequency shift that drives a saddle-node bifurcation, transforming the classical phase-space structure from bistable to monostable dynamics. In the quantum regime, this transition manifests as systematic frequency pulling and spectral broadening, while the steady-state Wigner function reveals a continuous correspondence between the quantum state and the semiclassical attractor despite finite quantum fluctuations. By constructing global synchronization phase diagrams in the squeezing--Kerr parameter space, we uncover a remarkably linear dependence of the critical squeezing strength required to maintain phase locking on the Kerr nonlinearity. We further demonstrate that the synchronization boundary does not coincide with the crossover between super- and sub-Poissonian photon statistics, showing that synchronization and photon-number statistics characterize distinct aspects of the quantum steady state. These results provide quantitative design principles for controlling quantum synchronization through Kerr nonlinearity, with potential relevance to trapped-ion, superconducting-circuit, and optomechanical platforms.
We introduce a quantum spin van der Pol (vdP) oscillator as a prototypical model of quantum spin-based limit-cycle oscillators, which coincides with the quantum optical vdP oscillator in the high-spin limit. The system is described as a noisy limit-cycle oscillator in the semiclassical regime at large spin numbers, exhibiting frequency entrainment to a periodic drive. Even in the smallest spin-1 case, mutual synchronization, Arnold tongues, and entanglement tongues in two dissipatively coupled oscillators, and collective synchronization in all-to-all coupled oscillators are clearly observed. The proposed quantum spin vdP oscillator will provide a useful platform for analyzing quantum spin synchronization.