We present a general theory of exceptional points of degeneracy (EPD) in periodically time-variant systems that do not necessarily require the presence of loss or gain, and we show that even a single resonator with a time-periodic component may develop EPDs. An EPD is a special point in a system parameter space at which two or more eigenmodes coalesce in both their eigenvalues and eigenvectors into a single degenerate eigenmode. We demonstrate the conditions for EPDs to exist in time-periodic systems that are either lossless/gainless or with loss and/or gain and we show that a system with zero time-average loss/gain exhibits EPDs with purely real resonance frequencies, yet the resonator energy grows algebraically in time. We show the occurrence of EPDs in a single LC resonator while the introduced concept is general for any time-periodic system. These findings have significant importance in various electromagnetic/photonic systems and pave the way of applications in areas of sensors, amplifiers and modulators. A potential application of this time varying EPD is highlighted as a highly-sensitive sensor. system matrices as 1 j j J j T e M Φ , where j
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