Isotropic harmonic oscillator

ID: isotropic-harmonic-oscillator

The classical isotropic harmonic oscillator has the same angular frequency in every Cartesian direction. Its equation of motion is , with solution . The trajectory lies in the span of and is an ellipse centred on the force centre, degenerating to a line for dependent vectors. For nonzero angular momentum, oscillates at unless the trajectory is exactly circular. This distinguishes radial and Cartesian frequencies.

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