Coupled Oscillations

natural oscillations in a composite system consisting of interconnected simple, or “partial,” systems. Such oscillations have a complex form because the oscillations in one partial system influence the oscillations in the others through the coupling. Coupled oscillations can be represented as the sum of the simple oscillations of the components, whose number is equal to the number of partial systems, but the frequencies of the components of the coupled oscillations differ from the natural oscillation frequencies of the individual partial systems. When the natural frequencies of the partial systems differ little, beats arise in the system. When certain initial deviations occur, the coupled oscillations can reduce to one or more of the simple components, but it is impossible to obtain coupled oscillations such that different components exist in different partial systems—that is, in this regard the system behaves as a whole.