At the algebraic poles are ; a retarded limiting prescription displaces them infinitesimally below the real axis. Set , with and . The denominator becomesConsequentlyFor positive these two poles move below the real axis, giving slowly damped oscillations. For negative they move above it and the slow oscillations grow. This is only the slow part of the radiation-reaction oscillator pole structure; the third pole must still be examined.
For positive , the real-axis frequency response of the radiation-reaction oscillator pole structure excludes future runaway growth but retains an upper-half-plane pole. Closing its inverse Fourier transform upward at gives a nonzero response before the force. The fast pole contributes approximately for negative . A strictly causal retarded prescription instead includes an exponentially growing term for positive and requires a Laplace transform contour. The pre-response is a consequence of imposing boundedness at future infinity, not an unavoidable property of all initial-value solutions of the differential equation.