An LC circuit, also called a resonant circuit, tank circuit, or tuned circuit, consists of an

inductor, represented by the letter L, and a capacitor, represented by the letter C. When
connected together, they can act as an electrical resonator, an electrical analogue of a tuning fork,
storing energy oscillating at the circuit's resonant frequency.

LC circuits are used either for generating signals at a particular frequency, or picking out a signal
at a particular frequency from a more complex signal. They are key components in many
electronic devices, particularly radio equipment, used in circuits such as oscillators, filters, tuners
and frequency mixers.

An LC circuit is an idealized model since it assumes there is no dissipation of energy due to

resistance. Any practical implementation of an LC circuit will always include loss resulting from
small but non-zero resistance in the wires connecting the circuit elements, as well as series and
shunt resistances within the elements themselves. Often, the purpose of an LC circuit is to
oscillate with minimal damping, and in this case their resistance is made as low as possible.
While no practical circuit is without losses, it is nonetheless instructive to study this ideal form
of the circuit to gain understanding and physical intuition.

For a circuit model incorporating resistance, see RLC circuit.

Contents
 1 Operation
 2 Resonance effect
 3 Applications
 4 Time domain solution
o 4.1 Kirchoff's laws
o 4.2 Differential equation
o 4.3 Solution
o 4.4 Initial conditions
 5 Series LC circuit
o 5.1 Resonance
o 5.2 Impedance
 6 Parallel LC circuit
o 6.1 Resonance
o 6.2 Impedance
 7 History
 8 See also
 9 References
 10 External links

Operation
An LC circuit can store electrical energy oscillating at its resonant frequency. A capacitor stores
energy in the electric field between its plates, depending on the voltage across it, and an inductor
stores energy in its magnetic field, depending on the current through it.

If a charged capacitor is connected across an inductor, charge will start to flow through the
inductor, building up a magnetic field around it and reducing the voltage on the capacitor.
Eventually all the charge on the capacitor will be gone and the voltage across it will reach zero.
However, the current will continue, because inductors resist changes in current. The energy to
keep it flowing is extracted from the magnetic field, which will begin to decline. The current will
begin to charge the capacitor with a voltage of opposite polarity to its original charge. When the
magnetic field is completely dissipated the current will stop and the charge will again be stored
in the capacitor, with the opposite polarity as before. Then the cycle will begin again, with the
current flowing in the opposite direction through the inductor.

The charge flows back and forth between the plates of the capacitor, through the inductor. The
energy oscillates back and forth between the capacitor and the inductor until (if not replenished
by power from an external circuit) internal resistance makes the oscillations die out. Its action,
known mathematically as a harmonic oscillator, is similar to a pendulum swinging back and
forth, or water sloshing back and forth in a tank. For this reason the circuit is also called a tank
circuit. The oscillation frequency is determined by the capacitance and inductance values. In
typical tuned circuits in electronic equipment the oscillations are very fast, thousands to millions
of times per second.

Resonance effect
The resonance effect occurs when inductive and capacitive reactances are equal in magnitude.
The frequency at which this equality holds for the particular circuit is called the resonant
frequency. The resonant frequency of the LC circuit is
where L is the inductance in henries, and C is the capacitance in farads. The angular frequency
has units of radians per second.

The equivalent frequency in units of hertz is

LC circuits are often used as filters; the L/C ratio is one of the factors that determines their "Q"
and so selectivity. For a series resonant circuit with a given resistance, the higher the inductance
and the lower the capacitance, the narrower the filter bandwidth. For a parallel resonant circuit
the opposite applies. Positive feedback around the tuned circuit ("regeneration") can also
increase selectivity (see Q multiplier and Regenerative circuit).

Stagger tuning can provide an acceptably wide audio bandwidth, yet good selectivity.

Applications
The resonance effect of the LC circuit has many important applications in signal processing and
communications systems.

1. The most common application of tank circuits is tuning radio transmitters and receivers.
For example, when we tune a radio to a particular station, the LC circuits are set at
resonance for that particular carrier frequency.
2. A series resonant circuit provides voltage magnification.
3. A parallel resonant circuit provides current magnification.
4. A parallel resonant circuit can be used as load impedance in output circuits of RF
amplifiers. Due to high impedance, the gain of amplifier is maximum at resonant
frequency.
5. Both parallel and series resonant circuits are used in induction heating.

LC circuits behave as electronic resonators, which are a key component in many applications:

 Amplifiers
 Oscillators
 Filters
 Tuners
 Mixers
 Foster-Seeley discriminator
 Contactless cards
 Graphics tablets
 Electronic Article Surveillance (Security Tags).

Time domain solution

Kirchoff's laws

By Kirchhoff's voltage law, the voltage across the capacitor, VC, plus the voltage across the
inductor, VL must equal zero:

Likewise, by Kirchhoff's current law, the current through the capacitor equals the current through
the inductor:

From the constitutive relations for the circuit elements, we also know that

and

Differential equation

Rearranging and substituting gives the second order differential equation

The parameter ω0, the resonant angular frequency, is defined as:

Using this can simplify the differential equation

The associated polynomial is

Thus,
or

where j is the imaginary unit.

Solution

Thus, the complete solution to the differential equation is

and can be solved for A and B by considering the initial conditions.

Since the exponential is complex, the solution represents a sinusoidal alternating current.

Since the electric current i is a physical quantity, it must be real-valued. As a result, it can be
shown that the constants A and B must be complex conjugates:

Now, let

Therefore,

Next, we can use Euler's formula to obtain a real sinusoid with amplitude I 0, angular frequency
ω0  = (LC)−1/2, and phase angle .

Thus, the resulting solution becomes:

and

Initial conditions
The initial conditions that would satisfy this result are:

and

Series LC circuit

In the series configuration of the LC circuit, the inductor L and capacitor C are connected in
series, as shown here. The total voltage v across the open terminals is simply the sum of the
voltage across the inductor and the voltage across the capacitor. The current i flowing into the
positive terminal of the circuit is equal to the current flowing through both the capacitor and the
inductor.

Resonance
Inductive reactance magnitude ( ) increases as frequency increases while capacitive reactance
magnitude ( ) decreases with the increase in frequency. At a particular frequency these two
reactances are equal in magnitude but opposite in sign. The frequency at which this happens is
the resonant frequency ( ) for the given circuit.

Hence, at resonance:

Solving for , we have

which is defined as the resonant angular frequency of the circuit.

Converting angular frequency (in radians per second) into frequency (in hertz), we have

In a series configuration, XC and XL cancel each other out. In real, rather than idealised
components the current is opposed, mostly by the resistance of the coil windings. Thus, the
current supplied to a series resonant circuit is a maximum at resonance.

 In the limit as current is maximum. Circuit impedance is minimum. In this state a

circuit is called an acceptor circuit[citation needed].
 For , . Hence circuit is capacitive.
 For , . Hence circuit is inductive.

Impedance

In the series configuration, resonance occurs when the complex electrical impedance of the
circuit approaches zero.

First consider the impedance of the series LC circuit. The total impedance is given by the sum of
the inductive and capacitive impedances:

By writing the inductive impedance as ZL = jωL and capacitive impedance as ZC = (jωC)−1 and
substituting we have
 .

Writing this expression under a common denominator gives

Finally, defining the natural angular frequency as

the impedance becomes

The numerator implies that in the limit as the total impedance Z will be zero and
otherwise non-zero. Therefore the series LC circuit, when connected in series with a load, will
act as a band-pass filter having zero impedance at the resonant frequency of the LC circuit.

Parallel LC circuit
In the parallel configuration, the inductor L and capacitor C are connected in parallel, as shown
here. The voltage v across the open terminals is equal to both the voltage across the inductor and
the voltage across the capacitor. The total current i flowing into the positive terminal of the
circuit is equal to the sum of the current flowing through the inductor and the current flowing
through the capacitor.

Resonance

Let R be the internal resistance of the coil. When XL equals XC, the reactive branch currents are
equal and opposite. Hence they cancel out each other to give minimum current in the main line.
Since total current is minimum, in this state the total impedance is maximum.

Resonant frequency given by: .

Note that any reactive branch current is not minimum at resonance, but each is given separately
by dividing source voltage (V) by reactance (Z). Hence I=V/Z, as per Ohm's law.

 At f0, line current is minimum. Total impedance is maximum. In this state a circuit is
called a rejector circuit[citation needed].
 Below f0, circuit is inductive.
 Above f0,circuit is capacitive.

Impedance

The same analysis may be applied to the parallel LC circuit. The total impedance is then given
by:

and after substitution of and and simplification, gives

which further simplifies to

where

Note that

but for all other values of the impedance is finite. The parallel LC circuit connected in series
with a load will act as band-stop filter having infinite impedance at the resonant frequency of the
LC circuit. The parallel LC circuit connected in parallel with a load will act as band-pass filter.

History
The first evidence that a capacitor and inductor could produce electrical oscillations was
discovered in 1826 by French scientist Felix Savary.[1][2] He found that when a Leyden jar was
discharged through a wire wound around an iron needle, sometimes the needle was left
magnetized in one direction and sometimes in the opposite direction. He correctly deduced that
this was caused by a damped oscillating discharge current in the wire, which reversed the
magnetization of the needle back and forth until it was too small to have an effect, leaving the
needle magnetized in a random direction. American physicist Joseph Henry repeated Savary's
experiment in 1842 and came to the same conclusion, apparently independently.[3][4] British
scientist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) in 1853 showed mathematically that the discharge of a
Leyden jar through an inductance should be oscillatory, and derived its resonant frequency.[1][3][4]
British radio researcher Oliver Lodge, by discharging a large battery of Leyden jars through a
long wire, created a tuned circuit with its resonant frequency in the audio range, which produced
a musical tone from the spark when it was discharged.[3] In 1857, German physicist Berend
Wilhelm Feddersen photographed the spark produced by a resonant Leyden jar circuit in a
rotating mirror, providing visible evidence of the oscillations.[1][3][4] In 1868, Scottish physicist
James Clerk Maxwell calculated the effect of applying an alternating current to a circuit with
inductance and capacitance, showing that the response is maximum at the resonant frequency.[1]
The first example of an electrical resonance curve was published in 1887 by German physicist
Heinrich Hertz in his pioneering paper on the discovery of radio waves, showing the length of
spark obtainable from his spark-gap LC resonator detectors as a function of frequency.[1]

One of the first demonstrations of resonance between tuned circuits was Lodge's "syntonic jars"
experiment around 1889.[1][3] He placed two resonant circuits next to each other, each consisting
of a Leyden jar connected to an adjustable one-turn coil with a spark gap. When a high voltage
from an induction coil was applied to one tuned circuit, creating sparks and thus oscillating
currents, sparks were excited in the other tuned circuit only when the circuits were adjusted to
resonance. Lodge and some English scientists preferred the term "syntony" for this effect, but the
term "resonance" eventually stuck.[1] The first practical use for LC circuits was in the 1890s in
spark-gap radio transmitters to allow the receiver and transmitter to be tuned to the same
frequency. The first patent for a radio system that allowed tuning was filed by Lodge in 1897,
although the first practical systems were invented in 1900 by Italian radio pioneer Guglielmo
Marconi.[1]

See also