Interference aided finite resonant response in an undamped forced oscillator

Abstract

We apply perturbative techniques to a driven undamped sinusoidal oscillator at resonance. The angular displacement, $\theta$, obeys the dynamics $\Ddot{\theta} + \omega^{2} \sin{\theta} = H\cos{\omega t}$. The linearized approximation gives a divergent response (at long times) but the nonlinear terms make the response finite. We address the nonlinearity-induced finiteness in two ways by separately treating the short and long time scales. At long times, we use the traditional perturbative techniques to extract two drive dependent behaviours - one, the amplitude of oscillation scales as $(H/\omega^{2})^{1/3}$ and, two, the time period of the slow mode varies as $(H/\omega^{2})^{-2/3}$. For the early time behaviour, on the other hand, we devise an alternate perturbative expansion where the successive terms get larger with the order of evaluation but have alternating signs. The alternating signs (phase differences) between these terms leads to adestructive interference like effect. A careful consideration of this destructive interference like effect between successive terms leads to a finite response which describes the initial behaviour of the amplitude of the response reasonably correctly. We further note that for larger drive values, the system seems to undergo a first order transitional behaviour with a sudden jump in the largest Lyapunov exponent.