Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration whose frequency matches a resonant frequency (or resonance frequency) of the system, defined as a frequency that generates a maximum amplitude response in the system. When this happens, the object or system absorbs energy from the external force and starts vibrating with a larger amplitude. Resonance can occur in various systems, such as mechanical, electrical, or acoustic systems, and it is often desirable in certain applications, such as musical instruments or radio receivers. However, resonance can also be detrimental, leading to excessive vibrations or even structural failure in some cases.
All systems, including molecular systems and particles, tend to vibrate at a natural frequency depending upon their structure; when there is very little damping this frequency is approximately equal to, but slightly above, the resonant frequency. When an Oscillation force, an external vibration, is applied at a resonant frequency of a dynamic system, object, or particle, the outside vibration will cause the system to oscillate at a higher amplitude (with more force) than when the same force is applied at other, non-resonant frequencies.
The resonant frequencies of a system can be identified when the response to an external vibration creates an amplitude that is a relative maximum within the system. Small periodic forces that are near a resonant frequency of the system have the ability to produce large amplitude in the system due to the storage of vibrational energy.
Resonance phenomena occur with all types of vibrations or : there is mechanical resonance, orbital resonance, acoustic resonance, electromagnetic resonance, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron spin resonance (ESR) and resonance of quantum . Resonant systems can be used to generate vibrations of a specific frequency (e.g., musical instruments), or pick out specific frequencies from a complex vibration containing many frequencies (e.g., filters).
The term resonance (from Latin resonantia, 'echo', from resonare, 'resound') originated from the field of acoustics, particularly the sympathetic resonance observed in musical instruments, e.g., when one string starts to vibrate and produce sound after a different one is struck.
Resonance occurs widely in nature, and is exploited in many devices. It is the mechanism by which virtually all sinusoidal waves and vibrations are generated. For example, when hard objects like metal, glass, or wood are struck, there are brief resonant vibrations in the object. Light and other short wavelength electromagnetic radiation is produced by resonance on an Atomic spacing, such as in atoms. Other examples of resonance include:
Since many linear and nonlinear systems that oscillate are modeled as harmonic oscillators near their equilibria, a derivation of the resonant frequency for a driven, damped harmonic oscillator is shown. An RLC circuit is used to illustrate connections between resonance and a system's transfer function, frequency response, poles, and zeroes. Building off the RLC circuit example, these connections for higher-order linear systems with multiple inputs and outputs are generalized.
where m is the mass, x is the displacement of the mass from the equilibrium point, F0 is the driving amplitude, ω is the driving angular frequency, k is the spring constant, and c is the viscous damping coefficient. This can be rewritten in the form
where
Many sources also refer to ω0 as the resonant frequency. However, as shown below, when analyzing oscillations of the displacement x( t), the resonant frequency is close to but not the same as ω0. In general the resonant frequency is close to but not necessarily the same as the natural frequency. The RLC circuit example in the next section gives examples of different resonant frequencies for the same system.
The general solution of Equation () is the sum of a transient solution that depends on initial conditions and a steady state solution that is independent of initial conditions and depends only on the driving amplitude F0, driving frequency ω, undamped angular frequency ω0, and the damping ratio ζ. The transient solution decays in a relatively short amount of time, so to study resonance it is sufficient to consider the steady state solution.
It is possible to write the steady-state solution for x( t) as a function proportional to the driving force with an induced phase change, φ.
\sin(\omega t + \varphi),|}}where
The phase value is usually taken to be between −180° and 0 so it represents a phase lag for both positive and negative values of the arctan argument.
Resonance occurs when, at certain driving frequencies, the steady-state amplitude of x( t) is large compared to its amplitude at other driving frequencies. For the mass on a spring, resonance corresponds physically to the mass's oscillations having large displacements from the spring's equilibrium position at certain driving frequencies. Looking at the amplitude of x( t) as a function of the driving frequency ω, the amplitude is maximal at the driving frequency
ω r is the resonant frequency for this system. Again, the resonant frequency does not equal the undamped angular frequency ω0 of the oscillator. They are proportional, and if the damping ratio goes to zero they are the same, but for non-zero damping they are not the same frequency. As shown in the figure, resonance may also occur at other frequencies near the resonant frequency, including ω0, but the maximum response is at the resonant frequency.
Also, ω r is only real and non-zero if , so this system can only resonate when the harmonic oscillator is significantly underdamped. For systems with a very small damping ratio and a driving frequency near the resonant frequency, the steady state oscillations can become very large.
and therefore
Rather than analyzing a candidate solution to this equation like in the mass on a spring example above, this section will analyze the frequency response of this circuit. Taking the Laplace transform of Equation (), where I( s) and V in( s) are the Laplace transform of the current and input voltage, respectively, and s is a complex number frequency parameter in the Laplace domain. Rearranging terms,
Define for this circuit a natural frequency and a damping ratio,
The ratio of the output voltage to the input voltage becomes
H( s) is the transfer function between the input voltage and the output voltage. This transfer function has two poles–roots of the polynomial in the transfer function's denominator–at
and no zeros–roots of the polynomial in the transfer function's numerator. Moreover, for , the magnitude of these poles is the natural frequency ω0 and that for , our condition for resonance in the harmonic oscillator example, the poles are closer to the imaginary axis than to the real axis.
Evaluating H( s) along the imaginary axis , the transfer function describes the frequency response of this circuit. Equivalently, the frequency response can be analyzed by taking the Fourier transform of Equation () instead of the Laplace transform. The transfer function, which is also complex, can be written as a gain and phase,
A sinusoidal input voltage at frequency ω results in an output voltage at the same frequency that has been scaled by G( ω) and has a phase shift Φ( ω). The gain and phase can be plotted versus frequency on a Bode plot. For the RLC circuit's capacitor voltage, the gain of the transfer function H( iω) is
Note the similarity between the gain here and the amplitude in Equation (). Once again, the gain is maximized at the resonant frequency
Here, the resonance corresponds physically to having a relatively large amplitude for the steady state oscillations of the voltage across the capacitor compared to its amplitude at other driving frequencies.
using the same definitions for ω0 and ζ as in the previous example. The transfer function between Vin( s) and this new Vout( s) across the inductor is
This transfer function has the same poles as the transfer function in the previous example, but it also has two zeroes in the numerator at . Evaluating H( s) along the imaginary axis, its gain becomes
Compared to the gain in Equation () using the capacitor voltage as the output, this gain has a factor of ω2 in the numerator and will therefore have a different resonant frequency that maximizes the gain. That frequency is
So for the same RLC circuit but with the voltage across the inductor as the output, the resonant frequency is now larger than the natural frequency, though it still tends towards the natural frequency as the damping ratio goes to zero. That the same circuit can have different resonant frequencies for different choices of output is not contradictory. As shown in Equation (), the voltage drop across the circuit is divided among the three circuit elements, and each element has different dynamics. The capacitor's voltage grows slowly by integrating the current over time and is therefore more sensitive to lower frequencies, whereas the inductor's voltage grows when the current changes rapidly and is therefore more sensitive to higher frequencies. While the circuit as a whole has a natural frequency where it tends to oscillate, the different dynamics of each circuit element make each element resonate at a slightly different frequency.
and using the same natural frequency and damping ratio as in the capacitor example the transfer function is
This transfer function also has the same poles as the previous RLC circuit examples, but it only has one zero in the numerator at s = 0. For this transfer function, its gain is
The resonant frequency that maximizes this gain is and the gain is one at this frequency, so the voltage across the resistor resonates at the circuit's natural frequency and at this frequency the amplitude of the voltage across the resistor equals the input voltage's amplitude.
Suppose that the output voltage of interest in the RLC circuit is the voltage across the inductor and the capacitor combined in series. Equation () showed that the sum of the voltages across the three circuit elements sums to the input voltage, so measuring the output voltage as the sum of the inductor and capacitor voltages combined is the same as v in minus the voltage drop across the resistor. The previous example showed that at the natural frequency of the system, the amplitude of the voltage drop across the resistor equals the amplitude of v in, and therefore the voltage across the inductor and capacitor combined has zero amplitude. We can show this with the transfer function.
The sum of the inductor and capacitor voltages is
Using the same natural frequency and damping ratios as the previous examples, the transfer function is
This transfer has the same poles as the previous examples but has zeroes at
Evaluating the transfer function along the imaginary axis, its gain is
Rather than look for resonance, i.e., peaks of the gain, notice that the gain goes to zero at ω = ω0, which complements our analysis of the resistor's voltage. This is called antiresonance, which has the opposite effect of resonance. Rather than result in outputs that are disproportionately large at this frequency, this circuit with this choice of output has no response at all at this frequency. The frequency that is filtered out corresponds exactly to the zeroes of the transfer function, which were shown in Equation () and were on the imaginary axis.
The next section extends these concepts to resonance in a general linear system.
This system has a transfer function matrix whose elements are the transfer functions between the various inputs and outputs. For example,
Each H ij( s) is a scalar transfer function linking one of the inputs to one of the outputs. The RLC circuit examples above had one input voltage and showed four possible output voltages–across the capacitor, across the inductor, across the resistor, and across the capacitor and inductor combined in series–each with its own transfer function. If the RLC circuit were set up to measure all four of these output voltages, that system would have a 4×1 transfer function matrix linking the single input to each of the four outputs.
Evaluated along the imaginary axis, each H ij( iω) can be written as a gain and phase shift,
Peaks in the gain at certain frequencies correspond to resonances between that transfer function's input and output, assuming the system is stable.
Each transfer function H ij( s) can also be written as a fraction whose numerator and denominator are polynomials of s.
The complex roots of the numerator are called zeroes, and the complex roots of the denominator are called poles. For a stable system, the positions of these poles and zeroes on the complex plane give some indication of whether the system can resonate or antiresonate and at which frequencies. In particular, any stable or marginally stable, complex conjugate pair of poles with imaginary components can be written in terms of a natural frequency and a damping ratio as as in Equation (). The natural frequency ω0 of that pole is the magnitude of the position of the pole on the complex plane and the damping ratio of that pole determines how quickly that oscillation decays. In general,
In the RLC circuit example, the first generalization relating poles to resonance is observed in Equation (). The second generalization relating zeroes to antiresonance is observed in Equation (). In the examples of the harmonic oscillator, the RLC circuit capacitor voltage, and the RLC circuit inductor voltage, "poles near the imaginary axis" corresponds to the significantly underdamped condition ζ < 1/.
Energy transfers from one oscillator to the next in the form of waves. For example, the string of a guitar or the surface of water in a bowl can be modeled as a continuum of small coupled oscillators and waves can travel along them. In many cases these systems have the potential to resonate at certain frequencies, forming with large-amplitude oscillations at fixed positions. Resonance in the form of standing waves underlies many familiar phenomena, such as the sound produced by musical instruments, electromagnetic cavities used in lasers and microwave ovens, and energy levels of atoms.
At certain frequencies, the steady state waveform does not appear to travel along the string. At fixed positions called nodes, the string is never displaced. Between the nodes the string oscillates and exactly halfway between the nodes–at positions called anti-nodes–the oscillations have their largest amplitude.
For a string of length with fixed ends, the displacement of the string perpendicular to the -axis at time is
where
The frequencies that resonate and form standing waves relate to the length of the string as
where is the speed of the wave and the integer denotes different modes or . The standing wave with oscillates at the fundamental frequency and has a wavelength that is twice the length of the string. The possible modes of oscillation form a harmonic series.
Avoiding resonance disasters is a major concern in every building, tower, and bridge construction project. As a countermeasure, can be installed to absorb resonant frequencies and thus dissipate the absorbed energy. The Taipei 101 building relies on a —a tuned mass damper—to cancel resonance. Furthermore, the structure is designed to resonate at a frequency that does not typically occur. Buildings in seismic zones are often constructed to take into account the oscillating frequencies of expected ground motion. In addition, designing objects having engines must ensure that the mechanical resonant frequencies of the component parts do not match driving vibrational frequencies of the motors or other strongly oscillating parts.
keep time by mechanical resonance in a balance wheel, pendulum, or Quartz clock.
The cadence of runners has been hypothesized to be energetically favorable due to resonance between the elastic energy stored in the lower limb and the mass of the runner.
Acoustic resonance is an important consideration for instrument builders, as most acoustic instruments use , such as the string resonance and body of a violin, the length of tube in a flute, and the shape of, and tension on, a drum membrane.
Like mechanical resonance, acoustic resonance can result in catastrophic failure of the object at resonance. The classic example of this is breaking a wine glass with sound at the precise resonant frequency of the glass, although this is difficult in practice.
Different resonator types are distinguished by the focal lengths of the two mirrors and the distance between them; flat mirrors are not often used because of the difficulty of aligning them precisely. The geometry (resonator type) must be chosen so the beam remains stable, i.e., the beam size does not continue to grow with each reflection. Resonator types are also designed to meet other criteria such as minimum beam waist or having no focal point (and therefore intense light at that point) inside the cavity.
Optical cavities are designed to have a very large Q factor. A beam reflects a large number of times with little attenuation—therefore the frequency line width of the beam is small compared to the frequency of the laser.
Additional optical resonances are guided-mode resonances and surface plasmon resonance, which result in anomalous reflection and high evanescent fields at resonance. In this case, the resonant modes are guided modes of a waveguide or surface plasmon modes of a dielectric-metallic interface. These modes are usually excited by a subwavelength grating.
All nuclei containing odd numbers of have an intrinsic angular momentum and magnetic moment. A key feature of NMR is that the resonant frequency of a particular substance is directly proportional to the strength of the applied magnetic field. It is this feature that is exploited in imaging techniques; if a sample is placed in a non-uniform magnetic field then the resonant frequencies of the sample's nuclei depend on where in the field they are located. Therefore, the particle can be located quite precisely by its resonant frequency.
Electron paramagnetic resonance, otherwise known as electron spin resonance (ESR), is a spectroscopic technique similar to NMR, but uses unpaired electrons instead. Materials for which this can be applied are much more limited since the material needs to both have an unpaired spin and be paramagnetic.
The Mössbauer effect is the resonant and recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma ray photons by atoms bound in a solid form.
Resonance in particle physics appears in similar circumstances to classical physics at the level of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Resonances can also be thought of as unstable particles, with the formula in the Universal resonance curve section of this article applying if Γ is the particle's decay rate and is the particle's mass M. In that case, the formula comes from the particle's propagator, with its mass replaced by the complex number M + iΓ. The formula is further related to the particle's decay rate by the optical theorem.
Vibrations of a motor or engine can induce resonant vibration in its supporting structures if their natural frequency is close to that of the vibrations of the engine. A common example is the rattling sound of a bus body when the engine is left idling.
Structural resonance of a suspension bridge induced by winds can lead to its catastrophic collapse. Several early suspension bridges in Europe and United States were destroyed by structural resonance induced by modest winds. The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on 7 November 1940 is characterized in physics as a classic example of resonance. It has been argued by Robert H. Scanlan and others that the destruction was instead caused by aeroelastic flutter, a complicated interaction between the bridge and the winds passing through it—an example of a self oscillation, or a kind of "self-sustaining vibration" as referred to in the nonlinear theory of vibrations.
The higher the Q factor, the greater the amplitude at the resonant frequency, and the smaller the bandwidth, or range of frequencies around resonance occurs. In electrical resonance, a high- Q circuit in a radio receiver is more difficult to tune, but has greater selectivity, and so would be better at filtering out signals from other stations. High Q oscillators are more stable.
Examples that normally have a low Q factor include (Q=0.5). Systems with high Q factors include (Q=1000), and lasers (Q≈1011).
For a lightly damped linear oscillator with a resonance frequency , the intensity of oscillations when the system is driven with a driving frequency is typically approximated by the following formula that is symmetric about the resonance frequency:
Where the susceptibility links the amplitude of the oscillator to the driving force in frequency space:
The intensity is defined as the square of the amplitude of the oscillations. This is a Lorentzian function, or Cauchy distribution, and this response is found in many physical situations involving resonant systems. is a parameter dependent on the damping of the oscillator, and is known as the linewidth of the resonance. Heavily damped oscillators tend to have broad linewidths, and respond to a wider range of driving frequencies around the resonant frequency. The linewidth is inversely proportional to the Q factor, which is a measure of the sharpness of the resonance.
In radio engineering and electronics engineering, this approximate symmetric response is known as the universal resonance curve, a concept introduced by Frederick E. Terman in 1932 to simplify the approximate analysis of radio circuits with a range of center frequencies and Q values.
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