The transient route to resonance

Abstract

The periodically driven harmonic oscillator with damping is one of the most elementary and trusted models in physics and normally applied in its steady state, disregarding specific initial conditions and associated transients. For example, steady state solutions are already sufficient to describe resonance. In some applications transient solutions might play a role though, and a review of these might be useful. In order to characterize the transients of the harmonic oscillator, its winding number is graphed in dependence of initial conditions. These visualizations show a complexity of the transients of the harmonic oscillator that are not readily evident from the inspection of the model alone.