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The free coupled quadratic model: global existence, the complete modal classification, mode energies, intrinsic degenerate mode subspaces, boundedness and the unstable direction
The free coupled quadratic model M q'' + K q = 0 of The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium with symmetric positive definite mass metric M and symmetric stiffness K: existence and uniqueness of motions for every datum on the whole real line, the complete classification of motions into oscillatory, affine and exponential modal families with mode frequencies sqrt(lambda_i), the conservation of the mechanical energy with the modal energy decomposition, the intrinsic (basis-free) description of degenerate pure-lambda families in the subspace ker(K - lambda M), boundedness of every motion when K is positive definite, unbounded growth of the affine zero-mode motions and of the exponential directions, and the Lyapunov instability of the rest point of the free model when K has a negative modal stiffness. The result is a conditional statement about the declared model class; it contains no claim that any physical system is described by it, no measured stiffness, mass or frequency, and no empirical qualification beyond the exact idealization of the model.
Statement
Use the fixed coordinate, time and energy units and numerical matrix convention of The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium. Every displayed matrix identity and phase norm is in those numerical coordinates; physical positions, velocities, modal amplitudes, frequencies and energies are recovered by the stated fixed scale factors. This does not change the set of physical motions.
For real , define the hyperbolic functions by and .
Global-time, growth and boundedness claims below refer to the unique maximal extension of the autonomous free equation on ; local motions remain its restrictions. Values at in coefficient formulas are evaluated on that extension when the original interval omits .
Adopt the free coupled quadratic model of The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium with data in which , is symmetric positive definite and is symmetric, with modal data , , , , modal coordinates and mode frequencies for . Write for . Then:
- Existence and uniqueness on the whole line. For every and every datum there is exactly one motion with and ; it is the unique maximal motion through that datum.
- Complete modal classification. A curve of class on an interval with nonempty interior is a motion of the free model if and only if its modal coordinates satisfy
for real numbers ; the coefficients are unique and are determined by the datum of the unique maximal extension through , for , for and for . 3. Energy and mode energies. Along every motion the mechanical energy is constant, and with one has and every is constant; for the families of clause 2,
- Degenerate families are intrinsic. Let be a modal stiffness, let and let , a subspace of dimension equal to the multiplicity of . A motion satisfies for every index with if and only if is a curve with for all in its interval and . Consequently the family of such pure- motions is independent of the choice of diagonalization : for it consists exactly of with and , for of with , and for of with . These formulas on a local interval are restrictions of their unique maximal extensions; are the position and velocity of that extension at time , even if the local interval omits . The individual modal vectors are not intrinsic when the multiplicity exceeds one.
- Boundedness. If is positive definite then every motion is bounded on . If is non-negative and some , then a motion with on a zero mode is unbounded on : the zero mode is affine, not oscillatory.
- Unstable direction. If is not non-negative, then is not a Lyapunov stable rest point of the free model (Equilibria, Lyapunov stability and asymptotic stability of an autonomous first-order system): there is such that for every there are data with whose motion reaches at some time .
The statement is read for the declared model data; no value of any parameter, no physical realization and no measured frequency is asserted.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: The data of the statement, the modal data , the modal coordinates , and a curve as in clause 2.
Sign-unrestricted modal construction of The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium clause (e): exist by Positive definite symmetric matrices have positive definite square roots, and the congruence M^{-1/2} K M^{-1/2} preserves symmetry and positivity clauses 1-3, and the symmetric matrix admits by Real spectral theorem: a self-adjoint endomorphism of a finite-dimensional real inner product space has an orthonormal eigenbasis, without assuming . With , direct differentiation and multiplication give , and . Thus the modal equivalence and energy identities hold for every symmetric on every interval; the non-negative- theorem Decoupling of the constant-coefficient quadratic system into normal modes, with the zero-mode and energy identities is not invoked for indefinite .
Scalar classification (The homogeneous damped oscillator: solution classification by the discriminant and uniqueness for initial data, The degenerate and repulsive oscillator: solutions for k=0 and the explicit growing solution for k<0, The damped driven oscillator model: second-order equation, phase-plane system and characteristic data): the solutions of on an interval with nonempty interior are exactly when (the case , , of the classification, with ), exactly when , and, writing , exactly when (the case , of the repulsive classification, with ); in each case the pair ranges over bijectively, with evaluated on the unique global extension and , , respectively.
Global linear existence and uniqueness (Variation of constants for via the matrix exponential): for the constant matrix of the phase system of The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium (clause (b)) and every datum , the curve solves on all of with , and any differentiable solution of that system on an interval containing with the same datum agrees with it there. Consequently every local solution is a restriction of the unique global solution, and the global solution is the maximal one (Extensions, maximal solutions, maximal intervals, and global solutions, Every Picard–Lindelöf initial value problem has one maximal solution on an open interval).
Lyapunov stability (Equilibria, Lyapunov stability and asymptotic stability of an autonomous first-order system): for the autonomous field of the free phase system, the rest point is Lyapunov stable when for every there is such that every maximal solution with exists for all and satisfies ; it is not stable when some has data with for every reaching .
Calculus (Sums, scalar multiples, products and quotients: , , , and when , The chain rule for total derivatives: , The derivative and the Riemann integral of a vector-valued function: an intrinsic derivative and a componentwise integral, Euclidean maps and diffeomorphisms): sums, products and composites of differentiable curves are differentiated by the algebra and chain rules, and a curve on an interval whose derivative vanishes identically is constant. Differentiating the hyperbolic definitions in the Statement using and gives and ; also because . Finally, as for : by the repulsive-oscillator case of [F2], while by positivity and monotonicity of the exponential (The exponential function is smooth and , The exponential is positive and satisfies , The exponential function is strictly increasing).
Proof
Modal equivalence: by [F1] the curve is a motion if and only if on for every .
Global solution: the free phase system is with the constant matrix of clause (b) of The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium; by [F3] the curve solves it on with the prescribed datum, and every solution with that datum agrees with it on every interval containing . Writing for the first components and for the last , the equivalence of the phase system with the model equation of clause (b) gives that is a motion with , ; conversely every motion's phase curve is a solution, hence agrees with this one. This is clause 1.
Pure- motions, intrinsic form: let be a modal stiffness and put , so that ; for one has and hence , so that (*). Conversely, if then with we get and by invertibility of , so ; hence the two sets are equal. The modal coordinates satisfy and is equivalent to the support of lying in the index set , because the columns of are an orthonormal eigenbasis of .
Scalar families: for each , [F2] gives that the scalar solutions are exactly the displayed families with unique coefficients determined by the global extension's values and ; combining with step 1.1 gives clause 2 and its coefficient formulas.
Pure- motions, equation: let be on an interval . By step 1.3, , so for every ; differentiating this identity once and twice, since is constant, gives . Hence with (*), invertible, and , so is a motion if and only if . This proves the equivalence of clause 4 for such curves and, combined with the support statement of step 1.3, identifies the pure- motions with the solutions of with values in .
Unstable direction: suppose and let satisfy and (The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium clause (e)). For define ; then and because and ; so is a motion with datum , whose phase norm is unbounded as . Fix ; given choose with , so that ; by continuity and unboundedness the motion reaches at some . Hence the condition of [F4] for stability fails, which is clause 6.
Energy: along a motion, differentiating and using together with the symmetry of and gives , so is constant; the identities and of [F1] give with , and shows that each is constant. Substituting the three families of step 2.1 gives the displayed values, using for and with for . This is clause 3.
Explicit pure- families: a curve with values in the subspace and has a unique maximal extension and is uniquely determined by that extension's , and the displayed formulas for , for and for define such curves for all : they take values in , and the scalar identities , , , verify the equation. The displayed curves take the given data at and solve the same constant-coefficient phase system, so uniqueness in [F3] makes every local curve with those extension data their restriction; hence the families are exactly the pure- motions. The statements of clause 4 about independence of and the non-intrinsic modal vectors follow because and the equations above involve only and : the admissible decouplings differ by an orthogonal change of coordinates preserving , and when the multiplicity of exceeds one, any not parallel to a chosen exhibits a pure- motion not covered by that single modal vector.
Boundedness: if is positive definite then every modal stiffness is : for with one has with , so . By clause 2 every modal coordinate satisfies and on ; since and are bounded linear functions of , every motion is bounded on . If instead for some and a motion has in the affine family, then as . The map is a linear bijection, so if were bounded then would be bounded — its components are the coordinates of in the basis given by the columns of the invertible block-diagonal matrix , and coordinate functionals of a bounded set are bounded; contrapositively the unbounded modal component forces unbounded. This is clause 5.
Clauses 1-6 are proved: the free model has globally unique motions classified by the three scalar families, the energy decomposition holds, degenerate families are intrinsic subspaces, positive definite stiffness bounds every motion, zero modes are affine and negative modal stiffnesses give an unstable rest point.
Remarks
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The three modal types are mutually exclusive per index. Each index is oscillatory, zero or exponential, and the model is oscillatory exactly when is non-negative. A zero stiffness direction arises, for instance, when the potential has a flat second-order direction at the equilibrium (an isolated strict minimum can still have zero stiffness, for example the scalar potential at ); the affine family is then not an oscillation at all, as the remark item of this page records in detail.
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What the intrinsic form does not say. Clause 4 shows that the family of pure- motions is intrinsic; it does not select a preferred basis of , and no physical meaning attaches to an individual beyond being one convenient basis vector. The frequency and the subspace are the intrinsic data of a degenerate mode.
Depends on
The coupled quadratic oscillator model: mass metric, stiffness, generalized force, modal vocabulary and the small-oscillation model at a mechanical equilibrium
Decoupling of the constant-coefficient quadratic system into normal modes, with the zero-mode and energy identities
The damped driven oscillator model: second-order equation, phase-plane system and characteristic data
Variation of constants for via the matrix exponential
The homogeneous damped oscillator: solution classification by the discriminant and uniqueness for initial data
The degenerate and repulsive oscillator: solutions for k=0 and the explicit growing solution for k<0
Equilibria, Lyapunov stability and asymptotic stability of an autonomous first-order system
The operator norm as the least bound and as the unit-sphere or unit-ball supremum
Open ball, closed ball and sphere in a metric space
Extensions, maximal solutions, maximal intervals, and global solutions
Every Picard–Lindelöf initial value problem has one maximal solution on an open interval
Square roots exist: a unique with ; the positives are
Sums, scalar multiples, products and quotients: , , , and when
The chain rule for total derivatives:
The exponential function is smooth and
The exponential is positive and satisfies
The exponential function is strictly increasing
The derivative and the Riemann integral of a vector-valued function: an intrinsic derivative and a componentwise integral
The Euclidean inner product on
Rectangular matrix multiplication and the identity matrix , including zero-sized shapes
Euclidean maps and diffeomorphisms
Intervals of : the nine order-convex forms, nondegeneracy, and length
Positive definite symmetric matrices have positive definite square roots, and the congruence M^{-1/2} K M^{-1/2} preserves symmetry and positivity
Real spectral theorem: a self-adjoint endomorphism of a finite-dimensional real inner product space has an orthonormal eigenbasis
Dependency tree · 2 levels
Sources
- K. K. Likharev, Essential Graduate Physics, Part CM: Classical Mechanics (title page last edited September 1, 2026), Chapter 6, Sections 6.1-6.2, Eqs. (6.1)-(6.21), chapter pages 1-6 (PDF pages 125-130): coupled oscillators, the normal-mode eigenproblem and the anticrossing of modes
- D. Tong, Classical Dynamics (Cambridge lecture notes, January 2015 printing), Section 2.6, Eqs. (2.123)-(2.129), printed pages 39-41 (PDF pages 45-47): normal modes, the two possibilities lambda^2 < 0 and lambda^2 > 0, the general solution and the reality of the eigenvalues
- I. Stewart, Advanced Classical Mechanics (MIT 8.09/8.309 Fall 2014 course text), Chapter 3, Sections 3.1-3.2, printed pages 52-59 (PDF pages 55-62): the generalized symmetric eigenproblem and the decoupled normal modes