Circuit Response
every model has an edge, and the figure carries it
Generator

The second path costs nothing at 12 pF and an order at 100 pF

computed by solving, not by drawing. Settling time to 0.01% of final value, marched on the closed loop, against the value of the second feedback path's capacitor — with the phase margin of the same circuit divided by ten drawn on the same axis so the two can be compared. The direct-current error the previous rung recorded as the isolation resistor's cost, 0.99% into 1 kΩ, falls to 1.20e-4% with the second path in. What the second path costs instead is a range: at 12 pF the circuit settles in 0.745 µs against the isolation resistor's 1.419 µs — faster than the thing it repairs — and at 100 pF it takes 9.18 µs, 12 times longer, at a phase margin of 47.9° that reports nothing whatever about it. What it is settling by there is one exponential of time constant 0.99 µs, which is the feedback network's own RC and contains no amplifier.
The second path costs nothing at 12 pF and an order at 100 pFcomputed by solving, not by drawing. Settling time to 0.01% of final value, marched on the closed loop, against the value of the second feedback path's capacitor — with the phase margin of the same circuit divided by ten drawn on the same axis so the two can be compared. The direct-current error the previous rung recorded as the isolation resistor's cost, 0.99% into 1 kΩ, falls to 1.20e-4% with the second path in. What the second path costs instead is a range: at 12 pF the circuit settles in 0.745 µs against the isolation resistor's 1.419 µs — faster than the thing it repairs — and at 100 pF it takes 9.18 µs, 12 times longer, at a phase margin of 47.9° that reports nothing whatever about it. What it is settling by there is one exponential of time constant 0.99 µs, which is the feedback network's own RC and contains no amplifier.110110100feedback capacitor from the amplifier output (picofarads)settling to 0.01% (microseconds), and margin ÷ 10 (degrees)the isolation resistor alone: 1.42 µsbest: 12 pFsettling, and the margin that does not predict itload capacitance2.2 nFisolation resistor10 Ωthis capacitor12 pFmargin here61.82°settling to 0.01%0.745 µsbest is0.745 µs at 12 pFresistor alone settles1.419 µs…and its d.c. error0.990%two paths, d.c. error1.20e-4%at 100 pF the tail isτ = 0.993 µssolved, then checked — settling against the second path's capacitora band around 12 pF

Drawn above at its default parameters, which is almost never how an essay calls it. A placement states the numbers that essay is arguing about, so the figure a reader meets is about that argument rather than about the generator — 98% of the placements on this site pass one, and the phase that raised that number from 12% found eight captions describing a figure the page was not showing.

At those defaults the edge it states is a band around 12 pF — the right-hand slot of the caption strip, which on this site is never used for anything else, and which is read back out of the drawing above rather than out of the code that wrote it. It belongs to Feedback, and the margin, which is to say a change to it is a change to lib/figures/feedback.js. It takes a slider on second-path capacitor (pF) with 9 settings, and every one of them has passed the same assertions as the frame above — a figure whose circuit stops doing what its caption says at any setting stops the build.

Called by 3 essays

which is the blast radius of changing it

The path that buys the error back

An isolation resistor restores a capacitively loaded amplifier's phase margin and costs it the thing feedback was for: the loop stops regulating the node the load is on, and a kilohm of load pulls the output down by a per cent. The standard repair is a second feedback path, and its cost is not an error or a margin — it is a range. At twelve picofarads it settles to a hundredth of a per cent in 0.745 microseconds, faster than the circuit it repairs; at a hundred it takes 9.18, and the phase margin there is better.

Feedback, and the margin

What the load sees looking back

Four rungs of this argument have measured what the amplifier does to the signal — the margin, the settling, the error, the noise. None has asked the question from the other end. A load that draws its own current sees an impedance looking back, and with the feedback taken from the amplifier that impedance is the isolation resistor, with no loop gain in it whatever: ten ohms, and a load step leaves an error that never goes away. The two-path arrangement recovers to a thousandth of it and charges for that in a quantity none of the four rungs below measured.

Feedback, and the margin

The rail the load moves

Seven rungs of this ladder end by saying the same thing: the supply is an ideal voltage source, so a load step is drawn from a node that cannot be disturbed. Giving the rail an impedance turns out to change the disturbing channel's own output impedance by three parts in ten million — its loop corrects the supply along with everything else — and to open a path to a second amplifier that shares nothing with it but a wire. How large that path is is a modelling choice: 3.84 microvolts per ampere with the compensation capacitor returned to ground, 17.3 millivolts with it returned to the rail, a factor of four and a half thousand.

Feedback, and the margin

Every generator