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Abstract

We investigate the effects of dichotomous noise added to a classical harmonic oscillator in the form of stochastic time-dependent gain and loss states, whose durations are sampled from two distinct exponential waiting time distributions. Despite the stochasticity, stability criteria can be formulated when averaging over many realizations in the asymptotic time limit and serve to determine the boundary line in parameter space that separates regions of growing amplitudes from those of decaying ones. Furthermore, the concept of PT symmetry remains applicable for such a stochastic oscillator and we use it to distinguish between an underdamped symmetric phase and an overdamped asymmetric phase. In the former case, the limit of stability is marked by the same average duration for the gain and loss states, while in the the latter case, a higher duration of the loss state is necessary to keep the system stable. The overdamped phase has an ordered structure imposing a position-velocity ratio locking and is viewed as a phase transition from the underdamped phase, which instead displays a broad and more disordered, but nevertheless, PT symmetric structure. We also address the short time limit and the dynamics of the moments of the position and the velocity with the aim of revealing the extremely rich dynamics offered by this apparently quite simple mechanical system. The notions established so far may be extended and applied in the stabilization of light propagation in metamaterials and optical fibres with randomly distributed regions of asymmetric active and passive media.