Isochronicity

Anisochronous oscillation — amplitude-dependent frequency (Van der Pol, Duffing, Stuart-Landau shear, Ruelle-Takens cascade); also separates AM (high amp spread, zero shear) from FM (zero amp spread, time-varying frequency)
oscillatordim (amplitude, period) per cycle2 metrics

What It Measures

Does the oscillation's frequency depend on its amplitude — the KAM twist (dω/dA) of nonlinear oscillators?

An oscillator is isochronous when its period is independent of amplitude (the ideal harmonic oscillator, a pure sine). Nonlinear oscillators — pendulum, Duffing, Van der Pol — are anisochronous: the period drifts with amplitude. The geometry extracts individual cycles (bandpass, then Hilbert phase marking 2π advances) and plots each as a point in (cycle amplitude, cycle period) — the orbit of orbits. Anisochronous systems show amplitude↔period coupling; isochronous ones stack at a single period.

Metrics

frequency_shear

|Spearman ρ(cycle amplitude, cycle frequency)|. 0 = isochronous, 1 = strong amplitude↔frequency coupling. Highest on quasiperiodic tori (2-Torus 0.96, 3-Torus 0.86, 4-Torus 0.86) and chaotic windows (Period-5 0.87); 0 on steady limit cycles (Clipped Sine, Lotka-Volterra), where the amplitude never spreads so dω/dA stays hidden — fundamental, not a bug. NaN when the signal does not oscillate.

amplitude_exploration

Coefficient of variation (std/mean) of the per-cycle amplitudes. 0 for a steady limit cycle; high for amplitude-modulated oscillators, chaotic flows, and exploring systems (Heisenberg Walk 2.11, Earthquake P-wave 2.10, Speech "Five" 1.44). Independent of frequency_shear by construction — an AM sine has high amplitude spread but zero shear.

Atlas Rankings

amplitude_exploration
SourceOriginValue
Earthquake P-wavegeophysical2.1025
Heisenberg Walksymbolic-dynamics2.0540
Speech "Five"acoustic1.4353
···
Logistic r=3.83 (Period-3 Window)iterated-maps0.0019
Triangle Wavesignal-synthesis0.0075
Clipped Sinesignal-synthesis0.0092
frequency_shear
SourceOriginValue
2-Torus Quasiperiodiccoupled-oscillators0.9604
Logistic r=3.74 (Period-5 Window)iterated-maps0.8659
3-Torus Quasiperiodiccoupled-oscillators0.8607
···
Thue-Morsesymbolic-dynamics0.0000
Triangle Wavesignal-synthesis0.0000
Clipped Sinesignal-synthesis0.0000

When It Lights Up

The oscillator lens for amplitude–frequency coupling. It catches the Hamiltonian KAM twist and vocal-tract modulation (speech is an amplitude_exploration outlier). Both metrics return NaN on non-oscillatory signals by design — the lens only speaks about things that actually oscillate.

Open in Atlas
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