Condensed Matter Seminar: Coupled, Multimode Parametric Oscillators: Generating Classical Spin-Models at 1D, 2D, 3D...

Parametric oscillators offer a distinct route to coherent many-body dynamics, beyond the usual laser and Ising-machine pictures. I will present our recent experiments on a programmable RF platform of coupled multimode parametric oscillators, where energy-preserving coupling produces pairwise mode locking across a large frequency comb. By modulating the coupling at the cavity repetition rate and its harmonics, the mode index is mapped onto controllable 1D and 2D spin-lattice geometries, with a path toward 3D graphs. The phase of each oscillating mode acts as a classical XY spin, enabling direct measurement of spin maps, phase correlations, coherence length, and vortex–antivortex defects. We demonstrate large-scale lattices with thousands of effective spins and study how controlled noise drives the loss of order. These RF experiments provide a scalable testbed for classical spin-model physics and establish the above-threshold counterpart of multimode parametric networks relevant to future quantum cluster-state generation.