Generation of 1/f noise in locked systems working in nonlinear mode

Properties of the phase fluctuations of a nonlinear oscillator were investigated. The multiscale aspect of synchronization is experimentally confirmed with the observation of lockings at any rational ratio. This global property of synchronization is associated with a local one by the study of the phase locked loop (PLL) under nonlinear conditions. We show that the discontinuity between the locking and the free-run state is characterized by the presence of slow temporal variations that induce a low frequency spectrum. An experimental verification of the increase of fluctuations confirms the classical results, which associate 1/f noise to nonlinearity, autosimilarity and regularity, represented here by the synchronization.