Achieving Phase-based Logic Bit Storage in Mechanical Metronomes

Abstract

Recently, oscillator-based Boolean computation has been proposed for its potentials in noise immunity and energy efficiency. In such a system, logic bits are encoded in the relative phases of oscillating signals and stored in injection-locked oscillators. To show that the scheme is very general and not specific to electronic oscillators, in this paper, we report our work on storing a phase-based logic bit in the relative phase between two mechanical metronomes. While the synchronization of metronomes is a classic example showing the effects of injection locking, our work takes it one step further by demonstrating the bistable phase in sub-harmonically injection-locked metronomes --- a key mechanism for oscillator-based Boolean computation. Although we do not expect to make computers with metronomes, our study demonstrates the generality of this new computation paradigm and may inspire its practical implementations in various fields, eg, MEMS, silicon photonics, spintronics, synthetic biology, etc.