Exceptional Point of Degeneracy as a Desirable Point of Operation for Oscillator With Discrete Nonlinear Gain and Radiating Elements

An oscillator made of a periodic waveguide comprising of uniform lossless segments with discrete nonlinear gain and radiating resistive elements prefers to operate at exceptional point of degeneracy (EPD). The steady-state regime is an EPD with $\pi$ phase shift between unit cells, for various choices of small signal gain of the nonlinear elements and number of unit cells. We demonstrated this fact by monitoring both current and voltage across each nonlinear gain element and finding its effective admittance at the oscillating frequency and checking the degeneracy of the eigenmodes at such point. The EPD studied here is very promising for many applications that incorporate discrete distributed coherent sources and radiation-loss elements. Operating in the vicinity of such special degeneracy conditions may lead to potential performance enhancement in the various microwave, THz and optical systems with distributed gain and radiation, paving the way for a new class of active integrated antenna arrays and radiating laser arrays.