Antiperiodic oscillations

Abstract

The investigation of regular and irregular patterns in nonlinear oscillators is an outstanding problem in physics and in all natural sciences. In general, regularity is understood as tantamount to periodicity. However, there is now a flurry of works proving the existence of "antiperiodicity", an unfamiliar type of regularity. Here we report the experimental observation and numerical corroboration of antiperiodic oscillations. In contrast to the isolated solutions presently known, we report infinite hierarchies of antiperiodic waveforms that can be tuned continuously and that form wide spiral-shaped stability phases in the control parameter plane. The waveform complexity increases towards the focal point common to all spirals, a key hub interconnecting them all.