The effect of a high-frequency force on the response of a bistable system to a lowfrequency signal is considered for both the overdamped and weakly damped cases. It is shown that the response can be optimized by an appropriate choice of vibration amplitude. This vibrational resonance displays many analogies to the well known phenomenon of stochastic resonance, but with the vibrational force filling the role usually played by noise. † We use the original definition of SR [4] in terms of signal amplification, rather the later definition [5] in terms of an enhancement of the signal-to-noise ratio.

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We consider an overdamped bistable oscillator subject to the action of a biharmonic force with very different frequencies, and study the response of the system when the parameters of the high-frequency force are varied. A resonantlike behavior is obtained when the amplitude or the frequency of this force is modified in an experiment performed by means of an analog circuit. This behavior, confirmed by numerical simulations, is explained on the basis of a theoretical approach.

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