Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Laplace operator is a second-order differential operator in the n-dimensional Euclidean space, defined as the divergence of the gradient (). Thus if f {\displaystyle f} is a twice-differentiable real-valued function , then the Laplacian of f {\displaystyle f} is the real-valued function defined by:
In mathematics and physics, Laplace's equation is a second-order partial differential equation named after Pierre-Simon Laplace, who first studied its properties.This is often written as = or =, where = = is the Laplace operator, [note 1] is the divergence operator (also symbolized "div"), is the gradient operator (also symbolized "grad"), and (,,) is a twice-differentiable real-valued function.
The Hodge Laplacian, also known as the Laplace–de Rham operator, is a differential operator acting on differential forms. (Abstractly, it is a second order operator on each exterior power of the cotangent bundle.) This operator is defined on any manifold equipped with a Riemannian- or pseudo-Riemannian metric.
Using notations from vector calculus, the wave equation can be written compactly as =, or =, where the double subscript denotes the second-order partial derivative with respect to time, is the Laplace operator and the d'Alembert operator, defined as: =, = + +, =.
The most common differential operator is the action of taking the derivative. Common notations for taking the first derivative with respect to a variable x include: , , , and . When taking higher, nth order derivatives, the operator may be written:
Consider the following second-order problem, ′ + + = () =, where = {,, <is the Heaviside step function.The Laplace transform is defined by, = {()} = ().Upon taking term-by-term Laplace transforms, and utilising the rules for derivatives and integrals, the integro-differential equation is converted into the following algebraic equation,
The second derivative of a function f can be used to determine the concavity of the graph of f. [2] A function whose second derivative is positive is said to be concave up (also referred to as convex), meaning that the tangent line near the point where it touches the function will lie below the graph of the function.
For any twice-differentiable real-valued function f defined on Euclidean space R n, the Laplace operator (also known as the Laplacian) takes f to the divergence of its gradient vector field, which is the sum of the n pure second derivatives of f with respect to each vector of an orthonormal basis for R n.