Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Euler–Lagrange equation was developed in connection with their studies of the tautochrone problem. The Euler–Lagrange equation was developed in the 1750s by Euler and Lagrange in connection with their studies of the tautochrone problem. This is the problem of determining a curve on which a weighted particle will fall to a fixed point in ...
Functions that maximize or minimize functionals may be found using the Euler–Lagrange equation of the calculus of variations. A simple example of such a problem is to find the curve of shortest length connecting two points. If there are no constraints, the solution is a straight line between the points. However, if the curve is constrained to ...
The Beltrami identity, named after Eugenio Beltrami, is a special case of the Euler–Lagrange equation in the calculus of variations. The Euler–Lagrange equation serves to extremize action functionals of the form [] = [, (), ′ ()],
[4] [5] Joseph-Louis Lagrange studied the equations of motion in connection to the principle of least action in 1760, later in a treaty of fluid mechanics in 1781, [6] and thirdly in his book Mécanique analytique. [5] In this book Lagrange starts with the Lagrangian specification but later converts them into the Eulerian specification. [5]
In field theory, the independent variable is replaced by an event in spacetime (x, y, z, t), or more generally still by a point s on a Riemannian manifold.The dependent variables are replaced by the value of a field at that point in spacetime (,,,) so that the equations of motion are obtained by means of an action principle, written as: =, where the action, , is a functional of the dependent ...
A Lagrangian density L (or, simply, a Lagrangian) of order r is defined as an n-form, n = dim X, on the r-order jet manifold J r Y of Y.. A Lagrangian L can be introduced as an element of the variational bicomplex of the differential graded algebra O ∗ ∞ (Y) of exterior forms on jet manifolds of Y → X.
For example, in D = 4, only g 4 is classically dimensionless, and so the only classically scale-invariant scalar field theory in D = 4 is the massless φ 4 theory. Classical scale invariance, however, normally does not imply quantum scale invariance, because of the renormalization group involved – see the discussion of the beta function below.
A formula to determine functional derivatives for a common class of functionals can be written as the integral of a function and its derivatives. This is a generalization of the Euler–Lagrange equation : indeed, the functional derivative was introduced in physics within the derivation of the Lagrange equation of the second kind from the ...