thumb|300px|Schematic representation of a self-oscillation as a positive feedback loop. The oscillator V produces a feedback signal B. The controller at R uses this signal to modulate the external power S that acts on the oscillator. If the power is modulated in phase with the oscillator's velocity, a negative damping is established and the oscillation grows until limited by nonlinearities.
thumb|300px|Schematic representation of a self-oscillation as a positive feedback loop. The oscillator V produces a feedback signal B. The controller at R uses this signal to modulate the external power S that acts on the oscillator. If the power is modulated in phase with the oscillator's velocity, a negative damping is established and the oscillation grows until limited by nonlinearities.
Self-oscillation is the generation and maintenance of a periodic motion by a source of power that lacks any corresponding periodicity. The oscillator itself controls the phase with which the external power acts on it. Self-oscillators are therefore distinct from forced and parametric resonators, in which the power that sustains the motion must be modulated externally.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).