Experimental Observation of Chaos and Chimera in rf SQUID Metamaterials*

Rf SQUIDs have been established as viable building blocks for microwave frequency metamaterials [1,2]. The nonlinearity and nonlocal coupling of rf SQUID metamaterials in particular endows them with interesting dynamical properties, such as chaos and chimera states, both of which have been studied extensively by theorists in the context of rf SQUID metamaterials [3,4,5].
The quintessential approach to experimentally study rf SQUID metamaterials, global microwave transmission measurements [1], will be employed to observe chaos in rf SQUID metamaterial. On the other hand, observation of chimeras requires local information from the SQUIDs, beyond the capability of this traditional technique, and will be achieved through laser scanning microscopy [6], where a well focused laser beam can address each rf SQUID in the metamaterial individually.
[1] M. Trepanier, et al., Phys. Rev. X, 3, 041029 (2013)
[2] D. Zhang, et al., Phys. Rev. X, 5, 041045 (2015)
[3] J. Hizanidis, et al., Chaos, 28, 063117 (2018)
[4] N. Lazarides, et al., Phys. Rev. B, 91, 054303 (2015)
[5] A. Banerjee and D. Sikder, Phys. Rev. E, 98, 032220 (2018)
[6] A. P. Zhuravel, et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 114, 082601 (2019)