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Updated: Apr 21, 2026

Generation and Coherent Control of Pulsed Quantum Frequency Combs
Published on: June 8, 2018
Entanglement tongue and quantum synchronization of disordered oscillators
Tony E Lee1, Ching-Kit Chan1, Shenshen Wang2
1ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA and Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Abstract:
We study the synchronization of dissipatively coupled van der Pol oscillators in the quantum limit, when each oscillator is near its quantum ground state. Two quantum oscillators with different frequencies exhibit an entanglement tongue, which is the quantum analog of an Arnold tongue. It means that the oscillators are entangled in steady state when the coupling strength is greater than a critical value, and the critical coupling increases with detuning. An ensemble of many oscillators with random frequencies still exhibits a synchronization phase transition in the quantum limit, and we analytically calculate how the critical coupling depends on the frequency disorder. Our results can be experimentally observed with trapped ions or neutral atoms.
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