Causal Green function of a damped oscillator ($G(t)=H(t)e^{-kt}\sin (\omega t)/\omega$)

For $L=D_t^2+2k{D}_t+k^2+{\omega }^2$, the causal Green function satisfies $LG=\delta (t)$. It is continuous at zero, with a unit jump in its first derivative. Its smooth positive-time kernel $g$ obeys $g(0)=0,g^{\prime }(0)=1$. The zero-frequency limit is $H(t)t{e}^{-kt}$. Shifting $G$ gives the zero-initial-data response to a delayed Dirac delta function.

Integrating the smooth positive-time impulse kernel gives the zero-data response to the Heaviside step function. For nonzero $\omega$,At zero frequency and nonzero $k$ the limit is $[1-e^{-kt}(1+kt)]/k^2$; when both parameters vanish it is $t^2/2$. The integral representation avoids ambiguous divisions in these limiting cases.

For a step-response kernel with $K(0)=0$, differentiating the start time produces no delta term from the response itself, because its coefficient is zero. The negative shift derivative is the impulse response. More generally an additional $\delta (t-b)K(0)$ term appears if the kernel has a nonzero initial value. The identity holds distributionally as well as for the ordinary smooth pieces.