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D: divergence, C: curl, G: gradient, L: Laplacian, CC: curl of curl. Each arrow is labeled with the result of an identity, specifically, the result of applying the operator at the arrow's tail to the operator at its head. The blue circle in the middle means curl of curl exists, whereas the other two red circles (dashed) mean that DD and GG do ...
Del is a very convenient mathematical notation for those three operations (gradient, divergence, and curl) that makes many equations easier to write and remember. The del symbol (or nabla) can be formally defined as a vector operator whose components are the corresponding partial derivative operators.
The divergence of the curl of any vector field (in three dimensions) is equal to zero: ∇ ⋅ ( ∇ × F ) = 0. {\displaystyle \nabla \cdot (\nabla \times \mathbf {F} )=0.} If a vector field F with zero divergence is defined on a ball in R 3 , then there exists some vector field G on the ball with F = curl G .
The gradient of F is then normal to the hypersurface. Similarly, an affine algebraic hypersurface may be defined by an equation F(x 1, ..., x n) = 0, where F is a polynomial. The gradient of F is zero at a singular point of the hypersurface (this is the definition of a singular point). At a non-singular point, it is a nonzero normal vector.
The curl of the gradient of any scalar field φ is always the zero vector field = which follows from the antisymmetry in the definition of the curl, and the symmetry of second derivatives. The divergence of the curl of any vector field is equal to zero: ∇ ⋅ ( ∇ × F ) = 0. {\displaystyle \nabla \cdot (\nabla \times \mathbf {F} )=0.}
The nabla is used in vector calculus as part of three distinct differential operators: the gradient (∇), the divergence (∇⋅), and the curl (∇×). The last of these uses the cross product and thus makes sense only in three dimensions; the first two are fully general.
This article uses the standard notation ISO 80000-2, which supersedes ISO 31-11, for spherical coordinates (other sources may reverse the definitions of θ and φ): . The polar angle is denoted by [,]: it is the angle between the z-axis and the radial vector connecting the origin to the point in question.
Explicitly incorporating this definition in the Green's second identity with ε = 1 results in = (). In particular, this demonstrates that the Laplacian is a self-adjoint operator in the L 2 inner product for functions vanishing on the boundary so that the right hand side of the above identity is zero.